Accidentally at Hogwarts
by ShadowKissedGallagherGirlLexia
Summary: Emma's back, and the girls all get new powers. When Cleo, Emma and Bella get moonstruck, Rikki tries to rescue them with her new powers, but something goes wrong, and the end up in a moon pool in a certain Forbidden Forest, which leads to a certain Black Lake on Hogwarts grounds. What will happen when the HP gang are repeating their seventh year as year eights? T for minor language
1. Chapter 1

**This disclaimer goes for the rest of the story**

**Also, in this story, everything in the third season happened, but it was only halfway through the year, so they haven't graduated yet(Lewis came back for the holidays and a few months), are still 17 going 18 and it is September now, and i know full moons practically never happen on the first day of the month, but lets just ignore that fact for the sake of the story, k? Also, this first chapter is just like an introduction to what went on so that you're not confused. (it will mainly be focused on the h2o girls because there isn't much to explain about the harry potter gang)**

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It was a few hours before full moon and the girls were hanging out at Mako before they had to get back. This time they were going to be staying at Emma's house with their excuse, 'Emma came back two months ago, and we haven't even given her a welcome back slumber party yet!' The girls were ecstatic when Emma came back, and although Bella and Emma's relationship was a bit rocky at first, they ended up getting along fine. After their relationship had been sorted, they had traded stories of Emma's time in Europe and what had happened to the moon pool while she was gone. Emma was devastated that the moon pool had been practically wiped off the face of the earth, but had brightened up when they reassured her that the next full moon over, had completely 'healed' the moon pool, so to speak.

That was when Emma had taken notice that although Cleo and Rikki had kept their lockets, they had traded them for the sea blue jewels they had found at the moon pool. At first she was hurt, but in effort they came up with an idea that would suit both Bella and Emma.  
They had later gone to Max's place and asked him to take off the back plates of the lockets and make four new plates with four waves instead of three. They also requested that Max make a new locket with a light green gem at the top to go with the other girls, and finally, to hollow out the inside of the locket a bit more and add a small hook in the inside at the top of the locket so they would be able to hang their moon stones **(AN: I'm just going to refer to those blue gems from season 3 as moon stones because i can't remember what they're called) **inside the locket.

At first Max was a bit reluctant to make so many changes to his originals, but brightened when the girls told him to think of it as, 'evolving' the lockets to suit the new generation. He warned them that it would be at least a month before he would be able to finish them, and the girls thanked him before rushing off to Mako.

Once there, the girls lounged around, showing Emma Bella's powers before Emma, being Emma, asked about the blue gems hanging around the girls necks. At this, Cleo's eyes brightened, where she asked, "Do you want one?" and before Emma was able to answer, Cleo had flopped out onto the side of the moon pool and demanded that Rikki dry her off. Once she was dry, she took her necklace off and proceeded to hold it by the end of the rope and slowly walk around the rock walls. Emma was quite baffled and had asked if Cleo was ok in a voice that questioned her sanity, but had received nothing but knowing smiles from Bella and Rikki. She jumped when Cleo squealed and Rikki had asked if she had found one. '_Found one what'_, she had wondered, then smiled when Cleo came back and showed her the blue gem nestled in her palm. The exact same shape and size as the other three that the girls were wearing.

The next day they had gone to Will's house and asked him to string the string around Emma's necklace.

A week rolled by with their average problems; Kim, getting wet, exams, boys, etc...

Then two weeks.

Then three.

Then a month came around and the girls were rushing to Max's place after school had let out. They had greeted him with smiles and he had smiled joyfully back and showed them the necklaces. The girls had smiled and thanked him a million times, insisting they had to give something back. Max, of course refused to accept anything but to take care of themselves and their secret. Oh, and one more surprise he had for them. When they opened the lockets, there weren't just simple hooks in each for them to thread their string wrapped jewels on. Max had taken extra time to create a thin metal band in the shape of a cross that fit the back of the jewels perfectly so that you pushed the jewel into the band, and it snapped on at the sides, top and bottom leaving the front clear apart from the miniscule bits of metal at each corner. This band hung from the top of the locket on the inside, just as the girls had requested. Wasting no time, the girls yanked off their gems and removed the brown string. Careful to not drop the precious jewels, they had snapped them into the bands and closed the lockets, smiling and thanking Max again.

From then on, whenever the girls went into the water, their necklaces no longer vanished with their clothing, instead, it stayed around their necks. The girls suspected that it had something to do with the moon stones being inside that allowed them to keep them on once they had become mermaids. A few days before the first full moon since Emma came back, Zane had stepped up his 'Rikki courting', as the girls like to call it, much to said person's dismay, and as much as she didn't want to admit it, but Zane was succeeding, even if it was slow. Extremely slow. Lewis and Cleo were never better, Bella and Will were still blushing every time someone mentioned them together, even though they had taken to holding hands in public, but that was all anyone ever really saw of their PDA, if you could even call it that, and Emma and Ash, well after Emma had come back, Ash had decided to start working at Rikki's, which while it didn't shock anyone on his work place, but did shock them on his return. When Emma had left, Ash had as well and they had wondered if he had gone with Emma. Turns out, he didn't. As soon as he came back, he and Emma got back together as if nothing had ever happened and resumed their relationship with teasing banters throughout the day. When full moon rolled around a few days later, all the girls had been crashing at Cleo's, and thanks to a certain blonde haired annoying little sister trying to sneak out of the house, all four girls had become moonstruck. once at Mako island, their moonstruck selves had taken all four of the gems out of their lockets and simulated a stronger than normal full moon in the moon pool at the same time as the moon passing over head.

Once the full moon had passed, the gems had glowed a few more seconds before returning to their non-glowing state. The moonstruck mermaids then swum home and tucked themselves in bed.

They were lucky that it was a long weekend, because they would be needing as much alone time as they could get with just the four of them, boys optional. They woke up normally, went through their routines normally, but when it came to their emotions being tested or their powers being in use, that was when everything went down hill.

All four girls had gained new powers. And not just one power like last time with the weather powers, they had gained _lots. _They gained so many, that they had to actually try and figure out what it was they got. So of course the gang called each other up and agreed to go straight to Mako. And of course the girls being the girls, called their boyfriends and told them to come.

Once everyone was there, they started working on what they had.

Cleo had gained the following:

The ability to turn parts of herself or all of herself into water. She could also turn other things into water, but only if it didn't have a heart beat.

The ability to reduce water. (Before she was only able to make more water or control it)

Telekinesis. (The ability to move anything physical)

The ability to enchant someone, typically men, with a song.

Rikki had gained the following:

The ability to turn parts of herself or all of her self into fire. She could also turn other things into fire, but only if it didn't have a heart beat.

The ability to actually control fire. (formerly, she could only set fire to things, now she can make shapes in mid-air and things like that)

The ability to make something disappear and reappear somewhere else.

The ability to send out an invisible 'jab'. (like something that forces you back but you can't see it)

Emma had gained the following:

The ability to change parts of herself or all of herself into ice. She could also turn other things into ice, but only if it didn't have a heart beat.

The ability to actually control ice and cool down water slowly. (formerly, she could only freeze things, now she can move the ice around mid-air, chip bits off the ice, things like that)

The ability to freeze something where it is but not move it.

The ability to send out an invisible force field.

Bella had gained the following:

The ability to change parts of herself or all of herself into jelly (Both the hardened form and the jelly-jelly form). She could also turn other things into jelly, but only if it didn't have a heart beat.

The ability to actually control jelly. (formerly, she could only turn things into jelly, now she can make shapes in mid-air and things like that)

The ability to phase things through things. (that means to go through things, like walls)

The ability to slow something down to half it's current moving speed.

The girls were quite puzzled on Cleo's singing power, as it was the only one that wasn't related in someway to any of the other girls powers, which were linked in some way, such as the ability to transform one's self into the element that they were already linked with. They let it slide, however because it _was _linked to one of their previous encounters when Cleo had become moonstruck. **(think season 1)**

It took the girls over a week to master their new powers. And when they did and finally had the time to go back into the water, they were ecstatic to find that their tail had changed. Well, not _really _changed, but they discovered, that their tail scales changed color depending on their mood. Depending on how strong the emotion was, it started out at their tail fin and the tip of their tail scales, and the stronger the emotion was, the more of the scale's color deepened and filled the whole scale.

This brings us back to the present time, where the girls are teasing Rikki about Zane's 'Rikki Courting'.

**Cleo POV**

"Come on Rikki, when are you going to take Zane back, he's trying so hard you know." Bella nagged at Rikki whose whole tail flushed a brilliant red at the following statement, "It's been like, three months, and he hasn't given up once on hi_s_ _Rikki Courting." _We giggled at Rikki's flustered face.

"Stop calling it that," she huffed. "Come on, we need to get back to Emma's before full moon." She swam off, flashing a still brilliant red tail at the girls before disappearing.

"She's right," I sighed, "We should be getting back." before swimming out, Bella and Emma following closely behind, I waited for them to go at the entrance to the pool, before using my power to move a big, circular slab of rock into the entrance of the moon pool. It blended in perfectly, and you wouldn't even know it was there if you didn't already know. We had taken to putting a rock over the land entrance as well, to prevent previous occurrences from happening again.

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**Rikki POV**

"All right, I'm going downstairs to get some popcorn." I said, jumping up and running downstairs, shouting over my shoulder, "Don't start without me!"

"Yup!" Chorused behind me.

After grabbing the popcorn bag and stuffing it into the microwave, I grabbed a bowl and waited, drumming my fingers impatiently on the counter. The beep sounded and I quickly poured the popcorn into the bowl before flinging the bag into the bin. Grabbing the bowl, I sprinted up the stairs, taking two at a time. "All right, let's st-guys?" I asked, staring at the empty room. I looked around and closed my eyes. '_Please not again', _I prayed. Then, feeling the wind against my back, My eyes snapped open.

"Shit!" I swore. Sprinting back downstairs, popcorn long forgotten, I grabbed my phone and jacket, speed dialing Lewis.

"Hello?"

"Lewis, hey, either we left the window open, I highly doubt it, or Cleo, Emma or Bella opened the window, for what reason I have no idea, how could they be so stupid!" I huffed out the last bit mainly to myself before continuing, "Anyway, just to let you know, they're probably already on their way to Mako, so I'm going after them. Can you meet me there and use the underwater entrance-Cleo practically glued that rock into the hole, so you won't be able to get in. Ok, I gotta go now, hurry up! Bye!"

"Wait, wha-"

"Bye!" I repeated, snapping the phone shut and shoving it into my jacket pocket. Planting my eyes firmly on the ground, I ran out of the already open door. Keeping my eyes on the ground was harder than seemed, between not knowing where to go, and having to resist the pull of the full moon, it took all of my will power to not look up, and I knew it would only get worse when I got into the water.

Finally, I saw the wood of the dock under my feet, sprinting to the end until I saw water, I stopped for a few moments to mentally prepare my self, quickly going over what I would do once I got there. "Ok, deep breaths." I breathed slowly, before diving into the water. The minute I touched it, I nearly looked up. Instead, I looked down at the sea bed and allowed my body to swim to Mako. Luckily, having swum to Mako so many times, my body didn't need my mind to do what i needed it to do, and soon, the entrance was looming ahead, and I could see the big slab of rock that had been pulled outwards by Cleo's power.

Not looking anywhere but straight ahead, I entered the moon pool.

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**Should I continue? Also, h2o pairing will be normal, but should I change any harry potter pairings? or keep them as the book says.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Cleo POV**

The first thing I felt when I woke up, was water. And my tail. Smiling, I sighed to myself. "Swimming." I whispered dreamily, flipping my tail fin up in joy, allowing the edges to curl slightly before flopping it back down into the water.

_'Wait. Water? Tail?' _Sitting up abruptly, I twisted my head in panic, trying to figure out what happened last night.

_**FLASHBACK**_

_"So how are you and Will going, Bella?" Emma teased. Bella blushed a light pink at this, and I giggled at her reaction. Will and Bella had grown a bit more confidence in showing affection for each other, but despite that fact, Bella always managed to find a way out of talking about Will. Not that she didn't, she just talked about him a bit, and then got going and seemed to forget that anyone was there with her. _

_"Shut up Emma," she mumbled, throwing a pillow at Emma, only, it didn't hit the intended target. In other words, it hit me._

_"Hey!" I cried, "It's not funny!" I protested. Emma had ducked out of the way of the pillow, and me being behind her, had been hit instead., and was now laughing as hard as she could. Despite what I said, I felt a smile tugging at the corners of my lips. "Oh, that's how you want to play it then? Fine." I launched my self at her, hitting her on the back with the pillow. Squealing, she grabbed the closest pillow, and smacked me right back in the face. Standing on the bed, we laughed as we continued to attack one another with pillows._

_Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bella reaching slowly for the door. "Oh no you don't." Grabbing another pillow, I chucked it at her head._

_"Bulls eye!" Emma cried, holding her hand up for a high five. Returning it, I smiled at Bella._

_"You weren't planning on going any where were you?" I asked innocently. Picking the pillow up, her eyes glinted maliciously._

_"You. Are. So. On." She smirked, before launching herself at us on the bed, and taking a swipe at our legs. Jumping up, she hit me on the shoulder, before receiving one to her stomach from Emma. I met her pillow with mine and feathers exploded around us. Emma joined in, giving me one final whack, before feathers erupted from her pillow. Laughing, we collapsed in a heap on the bed. Breathing heavily, I was suddenly struck by an idea. Using my control over wind, I swiftly twisted my hand, allowing the wind to slam the carefully covered window open and rush into the room, sending the feathers up in a flurry once more._

_"Cweooow!" Emma grumbled, her voice muffled by face full of feathers she had received. Bella and I looked at each other, giggling as Emma tried to spit out the feathers she had in almost swallowed. Looking up at us, we fell into a laughing fit once more, at the feathers in her hair. "It's not funny! Can I please get a little he-"_

_"Emma?" Bella asked, waving her hand in front of her face. She abruptly stood up, and Bella and I fell back in shock. Jumping down from the bed, Emma walked around us towards the window. Realization dawned on me, and I looked over a Bella, who nodded in confirmation. Cautiously, I followed Emma with my eyes as she walked around us. Standing in front of the window, she smiled at us._

_"Do you feel it?" She whispered, "The moon. The water. _Mako._"_

_"Come on Emma, let's go find Rikki first." I said softly, walking slowly towards her. Emma shook her head._

_"I know you want to come with me, just...look at the moon." She smiled before stepping aside, and allowing moonlight to flood through the now open window and into the room. The urge hit me like a truck, and before I knew it, I was yanking my chin up to look at the moon that had previously been shielded by Emma's head._

_'_It's beautiful_,' was my last thought._

_**END FLASHBACK**_

"Oh." I mumbled. As my senses slowly returned to me, I looked around and realized that we were in the moon pool. Only, it was bigger. And didn't look anything like the moon pool on Mako. Also, all four of us happened to be lying on soft sand with the lower half of our bodies in the water. Flopping onto my stomach, I looked to my left, and saw Rikki, then to my right, I saw Emma and Bella. All three were sleeping. I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. How did we get to a different moon pool? Did this full moon happen to be a special one? _'No.' _I realized. _'Lewis would have seen and told us if that was the case.'_

"Rikki!" I hissed, shaking her arm. Said person snorted and rolled over, showing me her back. I grumbled to myself. She was definitely _not _a morning person. "Rikki!" said a bit louder, shaking her arm harder. She snorted. "Fine. You asked for it." I huffed. Lifting a ball of water from the moon pool slightly bigger than Rikki's head, I let it hover a good meter above her, before cutting off my magic and letting gravity have it's way.

"ARGHHHH!" She screamed and I winced at the volume. Looking around her, she narrowed her eyes at me. "Cleo! What was that for? Now I'm all wet!"

"You were already wet." I pointed out.

"What are you talking about? Why would I be- Oh." She cut herself off, as she stared at the new moon pool and her tail. "...Is this a forest?" she suddenly blurted. Looking around, I noticed for the first time, that we probably weren't anywhere near the Gold Coast.

"Hey...you're right." I answered.

"What happened? What's the fuss?" Came a sleepy voice from behind me. Turning around, I saw Emma stifling a yawn.

"Yeah, what's going on?" I asked Rikki. "Why are you here? You're the only one who wasn't moonstruck last night." Emma's eyes brightened.

"Oh yeah! I remember, we had a pillow fight, then Cleo blew the window open, but nobody noticed. Then...Then..." She stopped and sighed. "I got moonstruck didn't I?" It wasn't a question. I nodded.

"Yup. Then you got me moonstruck, and Bella too, I imagine." I sighed. "Speaking of which, why hasn't she woken up yet? Rikki was so loud, I swear I went deaf for a minute." I snickered. She huffed, before pushing herself backwards and fully into the water. Emma and I followed suit and swam over to Bella. I hadn't noticed before, but looking closer, I realized that she had a small cut on the side of her forehead, and the surrounding area was badly bruised.

"Shit! What happened to her!" Rikki exclaimed, putting to fingers to her neck in panic. She must've felt a pulse, because she sighed in relief and said, "She'll be alright. She's just knocked out." She had a far away look on her face, as if she was thinking of something. "Oh no." She groaned. "This is all my fault."

"How? What happened?" I asked. she sighed, before she explained.

"After you guys got moonstruck-you must've snuck out the door when I was making the popcorn-I realized what happened and called Lewis. I don't know whether he got everything because I didn't really give him a chance to speak." She took a deep breath before continuing. "I swam to Mako to find you guys, and believe me, it's not easy, I swear that if we couldn't swim as fast as we could, I wouldn't have even made it halfway there. It's so hard not to look at the moon!" She whined.

"Rikki." Emma reminded her.

"Oh, right," she said, "Any way, once I entered the moon pool, you guys were...oh god you were terrible." she shuddered.

"Why? what did we do?" I asked, confused. We couldn't be _that _bad.

"...You guys were storming the whole of Mako Island! Literally! Well, Bella wasn't really doing anything..."

Emma and I looked at her in confusion. She cleared her throat and continued,

"Well..She was making jelly moons at the edge of the moon pool like a kid, but Cleo, you had a fucking _hurricane_ going on from the inside of the moon pooland it was covering the whole island! Emma, you were had hail and a _blizzard_ raining down on Mako!" She cried out the last bit a bit hysterically. "Snow, Emma! _Snow_!" My mind stopped working. _'Hurricane?'_ and _'Shit.'_ Seemed to be the only two words I could process. In the back of my mind, I realized that Emma was talking at snapped back to reality.

"In my defense, I was moonstruck." Emma managed to get out through the feeling of dread that was showing on her face, Which was better than I could say for me. Rikki snapped her fingers in front of my face and continued.

"Yes, well, nothing we can do now, what's done is done. Anyway, I was going to teleport you guys all back to Emma's room, but then the moon came out over the pool, and Bella started to compare her moons to the real moon. Between resisting looking up, and trying to concentrate enough to teleport you guys, I needed all the concentration I could get. But just when I was about to teleport you guys back, Bella threw up one of her jelly moons and yelled, 'LOOK! ITS THE SAME SHAPE THIS TIME!' and I was really startled. Then I accidentally looked up, and the last thing I thought of, was 'big moon,' and that was just when I teleported us, but I guess trying to teleport to nowhere doesn't work, so between my last thought, and my teleporting, we must've ended up in another moon pool." She finished nervously.

I took it in slowly, before I asked, "But how did Bella end up like that?"

"She must've hit her head or something when we got here." Emma replied thoughtfully.

"Great!" I said sarcastically, "Now we just need to figure out what country we ended up in."

"How do you know that we're not in Australia any more?" asked Rikki.

"No, no," said Emma, "She's right. Australia doesn't have any forests." I looked around and realized something.

"Wait a minute guys," I said, causing the two blonde heads to turn and look at me. "It's night time! Did we sleep the whole day?"

"No, I don't think so." Came Emma's thoughtful voice. "Do you feel that?" She asked.

"Feel what?" I asked.

"The pull of the full moon." Rikki answered, having caught onto Emma. Closing my eyes, I realized that they were right. Even if it was faint, I could feel a slight tugging sensation, just like when the full moon came out and we were outside with nothing to block it.

"So it's probably morning in the Gold Coast right now, so, wherever we are, we're about ten, maybe eleven hours behind. So I'd wager we're somewhere in the U.K." Emma reasoned.

"We're in the U.K.!" Cried Rikki, throwing her hands up. "That's just great isn't it? Oh, I know, let's just find the ocean and swim home!"

"Actually, that's not a bad idea." I said thoughtfully.

"What!" asked Rikki incredulously, "Am I the only one who's sane here?"

"I have to agree with Rikki here Cleo, even if we did know how to navigate ourselves back home, we'd tire out too fast. We only swim around Mako and the Gold Coast. That's not exactly long distance." Said Emma.

"Thankyou, Em," was Rikki's reply, tinged with a bit of relief.

"No, silly! Not that bit, I'm talking about finding the ocean." I answered. It was perfect. Rikki and Emma looked at me in confusion. "Ok," I decided to explain. "Where there's an ocean, there's a beach not too far off right? And we should be able to see it right?" They nodded their heads slowly. "And where there's a beach there is...?" I trailed off, waiting for them to catch on.

"Food!"

"Civilization!"

I looked at Rikki incredulously, noticing Emma with the same expression.

"What?" grumbled Rikki defensively. "I'm hungry." She whined. I rolled my eyes at how typical she was being.

"Ok," I said, coming to a decision and clapping my hands together. "let's look for and opening like the one at Mako, it'll probably lead us to the ocean, because, I don't see one anywhere near by."

A few seconds later, I felt a tug on my tail fin, and came up for air.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"Well, I found one, but what are we going to do with Bella?" Came Rikki's reply.

"We'll leave her here to rest until we've made sure that there is actually an ocean at the end of this tunnel, then we'll come back and wait for her to wake up. If she's not up to swimming, then I supposed we'll just have to come up with something then." I said. As far as i knew, we didn't bring our wallets with us while we were moonstruck.

"Oh wait! I have my phone in my jacket. Once we find the beach, we'll dry ourselves up and see if we can get a signal. Lewis has probably called by now and is looking around Mako. Oh great." Rikki seemed to realize something.

"What?" I asked suspiciously. "Did something happen to Lewis?"

"I'm not sure... He might've gotten caught up in the hurricane..." she said quietly.

"Great." Now if Lewis got hurt, it would be my fault. "Best girlfriend of the year award goes to...anyone but Cleo Sertori." I groaned, planting my face in my hands.

"Don't worry, I'm sure he's fine" soothed Emma, "but first, we need to get outta here and to that beach before the full moon shows up. I can feel it getting higher."

"What about Bella, what if she wakes up when we're gone?" I asked worriedly.

"Well, I think it's ok if she gets moonstruck, because when we get moonstruck, we usually want to go to the moon pool right? and she's in one now, so if she gets moonstruck, she'll probably go back to doing what she was doing last time she was moonstruck." Rikki reasoned.

We all giggled at the thought.

"Jelly moons," I snickered. "Seriously."

"Ok, Let's go." Declared Emma, before plunging down into the water, taking the lead before Rikki and I followed side by side.

* * *

**AN: think of the moon pool as something like the one in season 3 where the showed us Bella's backstory on how she became a mermaid when she was 9, only bigger, and the side with the opening has moon rock that has been eroded so that it is smooth and flat with sand over it, like a mini beach shore line for the moon pool. and i'm sorry the hp gang hasn't come out yet, I promise it's the next chapter, it's just that I don't want people to get confused and say that it's weird howthey just got there, I feel like I need to explain why it's like this and how they got there, because I personally hate it when authors don't explain enough and expect us to make assumptions. because you don't know what to assume.**

**Next update will be in a few days, maybe tomorrow if i'm not busy XD**

**P.S. did you like it?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Harry POV**

"Welcome back to Hogwarts to those of you who have returned and welcome _to _Hogwarts to our newest additions." Professor McGonagall's muffled voice sounded through the thick wooden doors of the Great Hall. Ron and Hermione were waiting beside me, and although they were excited, I could tell that they were a bit sad.

Usually the person to greet the students, was professor Dumbledore, and though it had been two years since his death, hearing someone other than Dumbledore welcome everyone for the first time was a bit saddening.

A hush fell everyone around us as the sorting of the first years finished and McGonagall began speaking again.

"Now, due to the circumstances of last year, the staff as well as myself have decided, that all students who should have graduated last year, will be repeating their seventh years as eighth years." While I couldn't hear anything, I could imagine how the hall would break out into excited whispers. A high pitched ringing sound of what I assumed was a teaspoon against a wine glass rang loud enough for us to hear it. We all seemed to hold our breath as McGonagall continued. "Now it is my pleasure to welcome back to Hogwarts, the eighth years."

With that, the doors to the Great Hall swung open, and everyone, myself included began walking forward, splitting into our original house tables. As I walked, I looked around, and to my amazement, the damage done last year was completely gone. The Great Hall looked exactly the same- as if the war had never happened. The enchanted ceiling was showing a cloudless star filled night sky and first years were easily spotted amongst the students.

"This makes me feel like a first year again," Whispered Hermione from beside me. And looking around, I realized everyone was staring at us and I couldn't help but agree with her. After everyone had sat down, McGonagall once again grabbed everyone's attention.

"The eighth years will not be staying in their respective houses. Instead, a different room has been arranged for them. Due to this, it would be appreciated if all eighth years would please stay behind after the feast. As always, all students are banned from the Forbidden Forest and items such as puking pasties from Wizard Wheezes are banned. A full list is in Mr Filch's office. That is all. Let the feast begin!" At this, the plates filled with food and the hall broke into loud chatter as people filled their plates and ate happily.

I smiled at the familiar surroundings. Ron was inhaling the mountain of food he already had on his plate. Hermione had an annoyed, yet fond expression plastered on her face beside said person. The familiar sound of laughter and chatter wrapped around him as he ate, savoring the moment. _Home__. _He thought.

The atmosphere surrounding him was shattered when Peeves came flying through the closed doors of the Great Hall screaming bloody murder. The whole hall became deadly silent in a second. Peeves _never _interrupted the feast. In fact, he never even entered the Great Hall.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!" He flew around a bit hysterically before flying straight to McGonagall, clutching his arm as if his life depended on it. He looked like he'd seen a ghost, only...not one of the regular ones. The entire hall seemed to be stuck on whether to laugh or stay quiet at the situation. What could've scared Peeves enough for him to interrupt the feast? Let alone ask a teacher for help.

"SCARY! FIRE! ICE! LOCKET! GIRLS! BURNING! FROZEN! TURN INTO FIRE! NO! TURN INTO ICE! ANGRY! DIDN'T MEAN TO! JUST PRANK! I'M SORRY!" He screamed hysterically. He seemed to be unable to come up with anything coherent, just keywords.

"I gotta give it to them. Whoever did this just became my favorite person in the world." Snickered Ron across from me.

"Ronald!" Hissed Hermione, "Whoever did this is powerful and could be dangerous. They may have even broken in!" Ron rolled his eyes at her.

"Yeah right! Someone breaking into Hogwarts." He snorted at her.

"I don't know Ron," Came Neville's hushed voice. "I mean, Peeves wasn't even scared of V-V-Vol- of You-Know-Who." Despite the fact that Voldemort had died, and having hundred of people witness it, old habits really died hard. That and the fact that people were still scared.

"Yeah, I sti-"

Ron was cut off by a thunderous, "PEEVES!" Courtesy of McGonagall. Still clutching his arm, peeves slowed down and floated over to McGonagall. "Now, what happened." She demanded. The hall was once again swallowed in silence, and just as Peeves opened his mouth, a shout loud enough to be heard clearly though the doors was heard. Everyone's head simultaneously turned to the doors, eagerly listening for more.

"WHAT!" A different voice was heard this time. "You did it to!"

"I was trying to stop you!" replied the original voice.

"No you weren't!"

"Yes I was!" Peeves had started to tremble.

"GUYS!" An entirely new voice sounded.

"Well _I _was trying to get my locket back!"

"That's besides the point!"

The new voice was entirely ignored as the other two continued. It was then that I realized that they had an accent that I couldn't quite place.

"Then what _is _your point?"

"STOP!" the newest voice was obviously trying to break up the fight. Again, some were at loss on whether to be curious about the situation or wary. I noticed that some of the older students had their wands out and were gripping them tightly under the table and he realized that with every word, the voices were getting closer.  
"No! Rikki, Stop! You're going to burn everything! No-Emma! Don't start to! Ugh! You guys are impossible!" The other two named Rikki and Emma were ignoring the third and were still arguing. "I said, Break. It. Up!" Everyone, myself included, jumped as the doors suddenly flew open. The force must've been great, because they opened so hard, that they slammed against the wall.

"Wind?" Whispered Hermione. I looked at her. whispering out the corner of her mouth, she clarified, "didn't you feel that? The gust that came in after the doors opened. Somehow, wind was enough to open those doors." I realized that she was right. What I had assumed was a gust _from _the doors opening, was actually from behind the doors. Then, I realized that, standing at the entrance of the Great Hall, were three girls who couldn't have been older than seventeen. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Ron had turned the colour of his hair, from his face, all the way to the tip of his ears. I also noticed that a lot of the guys had also turned varying shades of red. Curiously, I turned my attention back to the girls before I felt my face flush as well.

I realized for the first time, that the three standing there were wearing nothing but muggle pajamas. While Ron wouldn't recognize the clothing and see it as weird, he, and any other male would be able to see how much skin they exposed. There were two blondes, and a brunette. While one blonde had straight hair, the other blonde's hair was a lighter shade and was curly.

The two blonde's clothes weren't so bad, they wearing boy shorts and tank tops that had ridden up their bodies noticeably high. It was the brunette that caught most of the guys attention. She was standing slightly behind them obviously trying to split them apart. She was wearing nothing but a silky night gown that reached about two thirds up her thighs.

He heard Hermione gasp. "Look her hair!" Turning back, I carefully studied the trio, trying to spot what was so special about their hair. Then, too my surprise, I saw that the curly blonde's hair, had flames flickering at the tips and the flames were quickly taking over her hair. They were licking up her hair and if the other two noticed, they didn't say anything. Soon, her head was surrounded in flames that looked suspiciously like her hair, only they were floating lazily around, like she was in water.

"Cool it Rikki!" Cried the brunette, before she brought her hand down in a swinging motion, and wind came howling into the hall. When it stopped, he half expected the girl now identified as 'Rikki', to be bald, but instead, her hair had only returned to it's original form. I thought that was amazing, but nothing could've prepare me for what happened next.

"See, this is what I'm talking about." Said the other blonde, who he assumed was Emma. Rikki's eyes flashed, before she went up in flames.

* * *

**Cleo POV**

Entering the tunnel wasn't so bad. The entire tunnel was made of moon pool rock, so Rikki could create continuous flashes of blue light, allowing us to see, but then we hit a dead end. Emma, The tunnel had widened a bit around the size of the underwater entrance to the moon pool back on Mako, so the two of us could try to asses the situation side by side. Then I noticed something. Looking closer, I could see that the rock looked like it had been purposely put there, much like what we had done on Mako. Tapping Emma on her shoulder, I pointed to the edges of the circular dead end and she nodded her head. Then, swimming back a bit, she twisted her body slightly, before bringing her tail hard onto the boulder. Her tail immediately became black with a slight tinge of red to it, black indicating hurt, and red indicating shock, then letting out a surprised shout.

Acting quickly, I covered her nose and mouth to prevent her from breathing in. Using my hands, I quickly forced apart the water around us, giving us a pocket of air to breath in for a few minutes.

"Hey, are you alright Em?" Came Rikki's voice who I realized had joined us, popping her head into the pocket of air I was holding up.

"Yeah, just, it was like punching a brick wall. And it's not easy to hurt a mermaid tail." she frowned. "If tails could get bruises, I bet mine would be blue by now."

"Well... It's pretty close." I tried to joke, looking down at her tail, it was still black, but slowly fading away.

"Well how are we going to get this thing out of the way?" asked Rikki, before producing another five second long flash of blue light.

"Just leave it to me." I winked before dipping down under and letting go of the air pocket. I raised my right hand in the familiar, claw like shape, I slowly pushed the rock out of position. Looking back at Emma and Rikki, I smiled triumphantly before holding out my hand to them. Emma grabbed it before grabbing Rikki's hand and we swum out, but not before I pushed the rock back in place.

I tried to regain my bearings. While the tunnel was made of moon pool rock, wherever we were wasn't. And it certainly wasn't the sea. I couldn't sense the feeling that the sea gave me when I was in it. There was something else there, but it wasn't the sea. From what light we had, I could see that we were quite far down, but we weren't so deep that I couldn't tell which way was up. Pointing toward the surface, and still keeping a firm grip on Emma's hand, we slowly began the descent upwards.

Suddenly, A giant tentacle swung towards us. I screamed and panicked, ripping my hand away form Emma's, noticing that my air supply was low-I could see the bubbles I had produced floating up. I heard similar distorted sounds, and could see flashes of their panicked, white-blue tails. Another tail swung at me from the side and I swum up, grabbing Emma and Rikki's hand in the process.

_What the hell is this thing? _I wondered. Whatever it was, it was attacking us, and we needed to get out of here. I looked back to the pale faces of my friends and quickly pointed up, mouthing, '_No matter what,' _before once again gesturing upwards. They nodded, before we were forced to split once more as another tentacle swung upwards. I swum as fast as I could to the surface. I could feel the pressure decreasing, as I got higher and higher.

I noticed Emma was to my right quite far away and swimming with all her might. If I was a normal person, the only thing visible would be bubbles, but I could clearly make out her determined, yet terrified expression. Right now, we didn't care if anyone was out there, we just wanted to get away from that _thing_. Then I broke the surface. Only, I didn't realize that swimming from possibly a hundred meters below the surface at a speed faster than a cheater could run straight up into the air would make us fly so high.

When I broke the surface, I noticed that Emma was already a few meters up above me and was looking around for a solution. We were still rising up at a break neck speed and even though we were sooner or later going to slow down and start falling, I couldn't help but notice the view. It was sunset, and there was a castle. A huge castle, that was somehow beautiful, despite how old it looked.

"Cleo!" I snapped out of my day dream and into reality. "We're falling!" Emma screamed in panic.

"Oh yeah! No shit!" I yelled right back. She looked at me disapprovingly. "Sorry, but, it's not easy to be nice when you're a hundred meters above the ground and still going up with no way to soften your landing when you start to fall! Even if we try to aim back into the lake, we're going to break a few bones, even with them being thicker in our transformations!"

"That's it! we need to slide into something." She brightened. Completely lost, I looked at her in bewilderment.

"What are you on about!" I cried. I could already see her and feel me slowing down. If we went just a bit higher, I could touch a cloud.

"Watch!" she shouted back. Raising her hand pointing somewhere below her, she furrowed her eyebrows and concentrated. Then, about thirty meters below us, what looked like the beginning of an ice sculptor began to form, from top to bottom. Then, I realized, that it looked just like a water slide, only, it had _a lot _more twists and turns than your average water slide. It was only then, that I realized how high we were. I could just make out the bottom, which was a large, circular tub about the size of your average swimming pool. It was probably a lot deeper than it looked from up here. "Now it's your turn!" She shouted at me.

"Me? What am I supposed to do!" I cried.

"It's a water slide made of _ice _Cleo! The ice I make is colder then the ice in the Antarctic! Unless you want to literally skin yourself sliding down something that cold and dry, I suggest you add water! not to mention, landing in a pool three meters deep filled with _nothing,_ is going to hurt no matter what!"

"Well how was I supposed to know that?" I huffed. She rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to retort. "All right! I got it!" I cut her off before she could say anything. Turning my palm into water, I pulled more and more water from it, producing more and more. I carefully aimed it at the beginning of the slide and increased the flow. I let the water gush down, filling the pool at the bottom. "By the way, why are there so many twists and turns and ups and downs?" It honestly looked a bit terrifying.

"Well, If I just made it a normal slide, It would be just as bad as falling right back down into the lake. The ups and downs and twists help to slow us on the way down." she chirped brightly.

"What if we get stuck?" I looked back at it nervously. When no answer came I looked around. "Emma?" I couldn't see her anywhere. Then I heard it.

"'-n't worry! all the ups and downs are at the start and then there are a lot of twists and turns at the bottom half with only a few ups and downs. Wish me luck!"

I looked down. _Is she already on? _No, I couldn't see her. I looked up, just in time to see her dive through the clouds, hands in front of her as if she were swimming.

"Keep that water flowing!" She shouted over her shoulder. Luckily, I had been subconsciously doing just that. Bursting through the cloud line was amazing. If the sunset was beautiful before, it was amazing up here. The cold of the clouds didn't seem to affect me, rather, it felt like room temperature. If I had been human, it probably would have felt like an ice cold shower and my ears would have popped by now. I giggled, _the perks of being a mermaid._

Twisting my body into a diving position like Emma, I prepared to go through the clouds once more.

* * *

**AN: Sorry for the wait guys. I'm writing the next chapter right now :D Hope you enjoyed it! sorry if it feels like I'm favoring h2o a bit more than HP, it's just that, since they're the ones that came, I have to explain more on their side because HP is pretty straightforward ^^**


	4. Chapter 4

**Cleo POV**

The slide was a bit harder than I imagined. _Well, falling onto ice from fifty meters up isn't exactly smart._ And the water was cold. Really cold. I was once again reminded, that if I were human, I probably would've frozen on the spot. I let my palm return to it's original form and instead, closed my eyes and concentrated. Using my powers was a lot easier if I could see what I was doing, but since I couldn't I had to rely on my memory and imagination. Thinking of the start of the slide, I formed a rectangular block of water that stretched to each side of the slide. Then, I pulled more water from it, forming a sort of pump that would run as long as I was concentrating.

I snapped my eyes open and sighed in relief. It was going alright. Suddenly, I felt my stomach leave me and I screamed. Emma had created a deep slope right after going up, and it was terrifying. It didn't help that I was on my stomach facing down. Then I was pulled into a sharp left turn that quickly turned into a dizzying spiral. The spiral abruptly plunged back down and into another spiral to the right. The force of it this time was so hard that I nearly flew right off the slide. Half my body was hanging over the side, and I noticed that Emma was a few spirals below me. I groaned out loud. There was still so much to go.

After what seemed like forever, the spinning and screaming slowed down into a straight ending path. While I was still moving swiftly, I wasn't moving nearly as fast as before I slid into the water and let myself go limp. I closed my eyes and thought, _No more movement. Please. _Then I felt myself being dragged up.

"Cleo! Are you alright?"

"No." I groaned, "It's all your fault." Emma giggled at this.

"Now we just have to wait for Rikki." My eyes snapped open. Thinking about it, I never heard or saw Rikki coming down. I scanned as far up as I could see up the slide before noticing that no one else was sliding down.

"Hey Em, is it just me, or is Rikki missing?" Emma looked at me, before scanning the slide, then snapping over to the lake. The water rippled slightly and I crossed my fingers before Rikki shot out of the water. I opened my mouth to cheer, when a giant tentacle burst right out after her before wrapping around her waist. Rikki thrashed around desperately before placing her hands on the tentacle around her.

"I'm going to fry this stupid thing!" she shouted angrily. While I didn't really want an animal hurt, I couldn't see how we could get her out of the situation without attacking it in some form. Steam started rising from the tentacle, and I winced at the sound of sizzling. The tentacle quickly retracted, and Rikki fell back into the water with a splash. she bobbed her head up, looking around for an exit. Thinking fast, I molded a tube about 15 feet wide leading from the lake over to us. Turning, she saw us and I motioned for her with my free hand.

Not wanting to stay in the lake any longer, she quickly hightailed out of the lake and into our 'pool'.

"You didn't _have _to hurt it," I mumbled. She turned her head to glare at me.

"Oh yeah, and let myself get dragged back down to who knows where? You can barely see a thing down there, even with our fish eyes!" She snapped.

Emma snorted, "Fish eyes? First is super fish speed, now it's fish eyes?"

"Shut up."

"Guys," I cleared my throat, "don't you think we should find out who lives in this place? Then we can ask for help and find out if we're actually in England. We might even be in America, for all we know."

"Good point. Now, what do we do about this slide?" Asked Rikki. "I can't melt it, the whole thing will flood the place before it even reaches boiling point.

"Guess we'll just have to leave it here." I smiled brightly. Both blondes turned to look at me incredulously. "What? It's not like people can say that _we _made it, if anyone asks, we can just say it was like that when we got here. Then it'll melt in a few weeks."

"Oh _that's _nice, hey, there's a giant ice slide in your backyard, that won't melt for a few weeks, because it's as cold as the icebergs in Antarctica!" Was Rikki's response.

"We don't have much of a choice. If it melts slowly, it'll evaporate, if we melt it all now, the whole place will flood."

"What do you think Em?" We both turned to said person, only to find that she was dry and waiting on the grass. "I guess that means you agree with Cleo." Sighed Rikki." I used the water to shoot me over the edge of the pool before turning myself into water so I wouldn't feel the impact of the ground. I heard a faint, "Show off." Behind me as Rikki shot out from behind me, have to back down a few centimeters.

She dried us both before we headed up to the castle.

* * *

The halls were made of stone and there were torches lined against the wall. It was like stepping into the 18th century. I vaguely registered Rikki echoing my thoughts out loud in the corner of my mind, only I was too busy marveling at the huge hallway that was stretched out in front of us. I was also amazed at the thought that something as old as a castle, could still be around and thriving. Come to think of it, I'd never even heard of a castle with someone still living in it. Not an authentic one at least.

I was in no way an expert on castles or history, but I could tell that this castle was old, like, _old _old.

"Wow, this place is really old," Emma's voice drifted down towards me. I stopped and pivoted. I realized that I had wandered off on my own and Rikki and Emma were still 70 or so meters behind me. I started walking back towards them, when something big and white swooped over my head, heading straight toward Rikki and Emma who were looking the other way. I looked up and almost screamed. It was what looked like a little ghost-man with mischievous or wicked (I wasn't sure which one) eyes.

"Guys!" I yelled, running towards them. They turned and waved at me.

"There you are! We thought you got left behind!" Rikki yelled. The ghost was faster than me and was halfway there.

"Look up!" I yelled, but I was running out of breath, and my voice came out a lot softer than I intended. I was never a good runner. Swimming never seemed to tire me out, which probably had something to do with the fact that I was half fish, but running on land was a nightmare.

In one swift motion, the ghost swooped down and snatched Rikki's locket off her neck. Cackling madly, the creature whooped in glee. "New people! Strangers! Look like muggles! I's got her pretty necklace!"

"Hey! Rikki cried furiously, "Give that back!" Taking a swipe at the ghost, he cackled madly. "Who are you anyway?" Rikki growled in frustration, seeming to not notice that the thing was flying, white and obviously _not _human. Emma on the other hand, had gone completely white in the face. Nice to know that at least one of her friends was still sane enough to know when something was a human or not.

"I's Peeves!" It boasted, "Peeves the Poltergeist." It boasted, as if that was the most amazing thing. By now I had arrived and was panting with my hands on my knees next to Emma. Emma and I were snapped out of our shocked states when Rikki grew frustrated and finally grabbed on to Peeves' arm, only to have it hit something solid, before passing through the half translucent limb. Cackling madly, he cried out, "You can't catch me!" He turned to Emma and I and zeroed in on Emma's necklace. He cackled and swooped for her. Emma dodged his hand, when his other hand grabbed at her necklace. Then Rikki's arm, which had burst into flame, came out of nowhere, shocking Peeves and making him fling both necklaces into the far side of the wall. All three heads turned simultaneously towards the sliver things flying through the air. Emma and Rikki made eye contact for a split second before sprinting in the direction of the necklaces.

Unfortunately Peeves got there a split second before them. Picking the treasured items up, Peeves was about to take off again, when he seemed unable to lift himself higher than Emma. He tugged a few times before looking down and eyeballing his arm in confusion. Emma had turned her hand and forearm into ice and had grabbed a hold of Peeves' arm, creating a layer of smoking ice around part of his forearm. His expression turned into one of terror when he saw Emma's arm and it didn't help that Rikki had grabbed his wrist with the hand-she-had-turned-into-fire which he seemed to be unable to escape from as well.

"I'll take those." Rikki snatched the two lockets out of his trapped hand before releasing him. "But," She grabbed his wrist again, abruptly turning back, "If you ever come within a hundred meters of me again, I'll-"

"Rikki, stop it!" Emma admonished. "I'll admit I lost a bit of control when he took my locket, but you don't have to scare him so much!" Emma lectured, having let go of Peeves' arm already, she had turned to face Rikki who had followed suit. Peeves hovered there for a second still frozen in shock, before letting out a scream.

"PLEASE DON'T HURT PEEVESY! I PROMISES I WON'T BOTHER YOU AGAIN!" He screamed, flying down the way he had come. "FIRE GIRL! ICE GIRL! SCARY! DON'T! I'S PROMISE!"

"See? The poor guy has probably gone insane by now." Emma pointed her finger down the hall where he had disappeared.

"Yeah, well I wasn't the one that froze him first, you were!"

"Yeah, well at least I didn't start threatening him like some mafia boss!" By now, Rikki's hair had started to flicker and her lashes were smoking. Emma at least had a bit more control. She had kept her cool and was calmly walking down the hall. Rikki rushed to keep up with her, her fingertips lit with fire.

"Rikki, be careful, we don't want to burn this place down." I tried to warn her,only to be ignored by her.

"Yes, you shouldn't have such a short temper Rikki, if you didn't we-"

"Me? Oh, so someone takes a necklace with an undiscovered gem inside and I just leave it? Oh! I forgot to mention that it was _my _property!" By now, they were both speed walking and seemed to be competing. I sighed. With Rikki's stubbornness and short temper combined with Emma's competitiveness, they would probably make this place look like Antarctica had blown up by the time we got out of here. As we got further and further down the hall, the torches were flaring up and leaving scorch marks on the wall on one side, whereas the other side had completely dropped in temperature and the torches had gone out.

Suddenly they stopped and turned facing each other, voices rising in volume, I quickly tried to calm them down, only they were ignoring me.

"WHAT!" cried an exasperated Rikki, "You did it two!"

"I was trying to stop you!" replied Emma.

"No you weren't!"

"Yes I was!"

"GUYS!" I cried desperately. The two were ignoring me.

"Well _I _was trying to get my locket back!"

"That's beside the point!"

"Then what _is _your point?"

"STOP!" I cried out in exasperation. Rikki's hair was quickly going out of control and I could see and feel the cold radiating off Emma. "No! Rikki, Stop! You're going to burn everything! No-Emma! Don't start to! Ugh! You guys are impossible!" Oblivious two me, the two continued arguing. Getting frustrated, I tried separating them. Summoning a gust of wind, I directed it at the fighting girls. Nothing happened apart from the Rikki's flames going out. I vaguely registered a bang in the back of my mind but put it aside for the two who were going to loose it any minute. "I said, Break. It. Up!" Rikki's hair was now made entirely out of flames. "Cool it Rikki!" I cried, once again summoning wind and bringing my arm down in a swinging motion. Wind howled around us for a second before I let it go, relieved that Rikki's hair had gone back to normal. Unfortunately, this didn't last long. Emma just _had _to add fuel to the fire (almost literally) and say,

"See, this is what I'm talking about." Rikki's eyes flashed, before she went up in flames.

"RIKKI!" I howled.

"Oh, so that's how you want to play it huh?" Emma growled, before she froze, and before I could even bat my eye, she was ice. She had turned so fast, some of her ice seemed to have cracked and vapor was surrounding her. "Game on." She growled before pouncing on Rikki.

The two tackled, Emma having the upper hand before Rikki rolled over and stumbled to her feet, attacking Emma who was still on the ground. Fire and ice clashed, each protecting itself from the other. The temperature of Rikki's fire was so hot, I could feel it from where I was standing. Emma wasn't helping either. I was starting to feel hot and cold. In order to protect themselves from the other, the girls had to continuously decrease or increase their temperature.

The floor around Emma was covered in a layer of frost or at this point, even thin ice. Rikki was leaving scorch marks every were she stepped, melting Emma's 'ice prints' as she went. Looking for an opening, I tried to find a way to intercept the two without injuring my self or doing something that was easy to ignore. Seeing an opening where both girls had shoved each other a ways away from each other, I phased into my water form and tackled Rikki who had just got up. I swirled the water that made up my body so that I kept my shape, but it looked like I was a specially shaped whirl pool. Doing this allowed me to put out Rikki's flames a bit and not harm me or frce me to turn back into my original form.

She glared at me from underneath me and I shouted at her, "Until you return back to normal, I'm not getting off, and I'll leave you stuck in all your fishy glory and keep you like that until you and Emma stop fighting!" Funnily enough, even when they were in their elemental forms, they would still turn into mermaids if the water didn't evaporate or freeze when it touched the for over ten seconds. I was the perfect job for that.

1, they knew that if I was to loose me form, they would be responsible for hurting me, and two, their elements didn't seem to affect my water as much as they would normal water. It was like we each had a bit of immunity to each others elements.

"5...4...3...2..." I counted slowly.

"Alright!" She cried, returning to normal just as I sprang off her.

"Emma," I warned, "Don't say anything, just-"

"Alright, alright." She grumbled.

"Good," I sighed happily, then I looked around. There were small chunks of ice and melted ice every where. "Clean this up." I directed at the two of them. They grumbled a bit before complying. Once they were done, I surveyed the area a bit before noticing that we were in front of a room. A really big room.

Slowly, I looked up and to my horror, saw what looked like a thousand students staring at us with mixed expressions, ranging from horror to wariness to amusement. Rikki was the first to snap out of her shocked state and say something.

"Hi!" She smiled, waving, before all hell broke loose.

* * *

**AN Sorry about the long wait! school...**

**well, i hope you liked it**

**and for those of you who were asking about Bella, she's in the next chapter. I had to have an excuse on why they would go up to a castle apart from asking for directions. also, it helps a bit with the story line later on, very minor though. sorry to all you guys who were wondering! I promise she's in the next chap. ^^ **

**thanks!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hey there, so sorry for not updating!**

**But thanks so much for all the reviews! And I know that some of us might be confused at the measurements that are in meters or centimeters, its just i had to change it because the Australians use cm and m instead of feet and inches. I used a converter and rounded it off, you can do it yourself if your a bit confused.  
**

**and when it says harry pov it'll be in 3rd person pov because the books really influenced my writing of harry's pov. its really annoying having to go back to edit a he into a my every few seconds**

**Oh yeah, and some of you might have noticed, but im sometimes basing the girls powers on their emotions, i thought it would be a bit more interesting :)**

* * *

**Harry POV**

"Hi!" Smiled the blonde named Rikki, smiling and waving as if nothing ever happened. That single word seemed to call every one back to Earth.

"STUPEFY!" Cried one of the sixth years at the Hufflepuff table, sending the bright red light straight at the brunette. Before he knew it, the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws were shouting masses of spells at the trio which for some reason, seemed to be unharmed.

The Slytherins were helping out too and before he knew it, the Gryffindors too. He was loosing sight of the girls and couldn't see what was happening. He stood up and craned his head, trying to see over the other students.

"STUPEFY!" bellowed Ron from beside him, blasting his eardrums back to the last century.

"Ron!" he cried, clutching his ear. Looking around, he spotted Hermione who was standing on top of the table, doing her best to avoid the plates still piled with uneaten food. Using her idea, he scrambled up the bench and onto the table.

Standing next to Hermione, he craned his head over some of the other students who had the same idea as Hermione. He could see occasional bursts of flames and what looked like vapor around the trio. If he squinted he could see a dozen spells being deflected at once with a flick of a wrist, He could even see spells hitting an arm of ice only to somehow freeze before the ice smashed when an ice hand swiped through the recently frozen beams. He could see students staggering under the weight of an extra long wand once the spells had been frozen. He could see a blur of fire moving through the spells which were having no affect, whatsoever, on it. In fact, if you concentrated, you could see that when the spells touched the figure of fire, they weren't going through it, once they touched it, the seemed to just...disappear. Like the heat was somehow able to incinerate the spell or something.

Then with a jolt, he realized that the brunette was missing. Squinting, he realized that she was crouched right outside the Great Hall with her arms in front of her and her fingers tensed in what looked like the shape of claws. Squinting he could make out water gushing out of her hands and forming a low wall that was getting higher and higher. The water was gushing out of her hands faster and faster and soon, half the students had stopped fighting and were walking backwards in awe of the water wall about half the height of the doors to the Great Hall.

The brunette was now standing up and water was gushing from her elbows, surrounding her arms in what looked like twin waterfalls.

"Rikki! Emma!" She cried. He expected the cry to be drowned out by the sound of gushing water, but he realised that the water wasn't making the slightest of noises. It was completely silent until her cry and the attack started once more. Turning and fleeing, the two figures of fire and ice returned to a human form and the blonde with straight hair shoved her hand behind her as if to stop the onslaught of spells. It did. Somehow, her wandless magic was enough to stop all the spells at once and bounce them back to the crowd. They bounced back from a few feet behind them like a shield charm had been cast around the two. Then they disappeared into the wall of water.

He thought he heard a muffled bang through the water, like the doors had been shut but he couldn't be sure because at that moment, an uproar began and students began running to the wall, intending to go after the trio.

It was honestly quite amusing to see them literally run into the wall that had somehow frozen in less than a millisecond.

"SILENCE!" boomed McGonagall's magically amplified voice.

"That took them a while." Grumbled Hermione and he couldn't help but agree. They probably thought that three muggles could be easily detained by only a handful of students, they were obviously not expecting such a strange turn of events.

"Now, all eighth years and seventh years will stay behind and assist the staff in patrolling the grounds once the barrier has been removed, and all prefects will lead their houses calmly and quietly to their house common rooms. No one is to under any circumstances leave their dormitories or common room until tomorrow morning. Everything will hopefully be sorted and explained at breakfast tomorrow. Now all sixth years and under please move to the back of the hall, everyone else move toward the front and assist in the melting of the barrier."

"Professor," Hermione raised her hand, "Where will we put all the water?" In response, a long container made of wood about a foot deep appeared with a flick of McGonagall's wand. It's length was the length of the barrier and touched the ice. McGonagall cast an undetectable extension charm on the long box and turned around.

"Satisfied Miss Granger?"

"Very Professor." She replied with a nod.

"Ready, start!" Cried Mcgonagall and cries of Confringos and Incendios could exploded from students mouths. The bursts of flame were so hot, it felt like his eyebrows would be singed right off, but the hot flames barely scratched the ice. It did nothing but cause a bit of downpour from the barrier, you couldn't even see a dent in the ice, that was how much was melted.

Hot air charms were cast which worked a bit better but barely and finally Hermione tried out a _Reducto _chunks of ice finally began to fall. They had to send a dozen students behind them when larger chunks of ice went off course and threatened to knock someone out like a bludger. It took them almost twenty minutes to finally finish breaking the barrier down.

Harry found himself cheering with the rest of the students at their victory only to realise a moment later, that the doors had been frozen too.

"This ice must be as cold as the ice in the Antarctic!" cried Hermione in frustration. The she brightened up, "Wait a minute Harry, I've got an idea." She grinned triumphantly before hurrying over to McGonagall. A few minutes passed before McGonagall called everyone to attention.

"Attention! Myself and Professor will be standing by the doors, we will be casting the Phasing Charm on groups of six who we will assign either a floor or a certain area they must search and patrol before reporting back to the Great Hall. Prefects and younger students will be charmed last and will immediately go straight to the houses. Now hurry and begin."

I quickly found Ron and Hermione before finding Ginny, Neville and Seamus. "Perambula Murum," Chanted Flitwick and McGonagall before saying, "You six will search the grounds outside." He stepped through the door, but not before looking behind his shoulder and seeing Malfoy, Greengrass, Crabbe, Zabini, Bulstrode and Parkinson get assigned to the dungeons. Typical.

Once they got outside, Neville asked, "Did you see the wandless magic they were using? it was amazing, I didn't even know it was possible to turn yourself into an element." Hermione bit her lip.

"Actually Neville, I'm not sure if that _was _wandless magic."

"What do you mean 'Mione?" he asked, "How else would they be casting shield charms and freezing _spells, _it doesn't make sense."

"Well, you can't actually turn yourself into any sort of element using wizarding magic, sort of like how house elf magic is different from wizarding magic, there are certain restrictions to what wizards can do. Take animagi for example, they are able to choose a single animal to turn into, but they are restricted to purely non-magical animals, like cats, dogs and stags, they wouldn't be able to turn into a unicorn or a dragon. A metamorphmagus wouldn't be able to turn his or her hair into fire, water, earth, or any other element. They are restricted to animals and humans. You notice that they can't turn into wood because that, too is an element." At this point, Neville looked slightly confused, but he seemed to have gotten the main point.

"So...What are you saying they are? I mean...I thought they were muggles. I've never really been to the muggle world, Gran never really thought it necessary, but those clothes were the strangest things I've ever seen." He blushed beet red at the memory, and Harry couldn't help but do the same. Don't get him wrong, he loved Ginny, but even though he knew that was standard sleep ware for teenage girls in the muggle world, he had never really paid attention to what girls wear to sleep...

"Do all muggle girls dress like that?" Asked Neville curiously before turning darker then Ron's hair when he realised what he just said.

"I wouldn't say yes," Hermione replied disapprovingly, "but i would say most of the teenage population would, especially in America. Only when sleeping though!" She added at the end when she caught the look of shock on Neville and Ron's faces. "Most wouldn't dress like the brunette, hers were bordering on lingerie." she muttered to herself just as they stepped outside onto the grass.

He stopped and gaped. With his mouth open. Standing in front of them, was what looked like a cross between a roller coaster and a slide. Only taller than the world's tallest building. And it was made out of ice. "What is it with these girls and ice?" He asked out loud, dazed, he still couldn't see the top. It was probably blocked by all the twists and turns.

"Forget that! How would they even make this, _why _would they even make this?" Cried Hermione. "This is even more proof that they're muggles. They at least live in the muggle world. Judging from their appearance, they were about 17 and wizarding schools don't teach such things as physics. If they were plain witches, the would have just plunged straight down on a straight slide of ice. But they _knew_! They knew about physics, and how having a straight slide would not help break their fall!" Hermione continued ranting, her exasperated voice getting softer until it eventually turned into muttering as she paced along the length of what looked like a pool.

Harry, taking pity on his female friend, put a hand on a shoulder, causing her to stop her pacing. "We'll figure this out later. If we can catch them, we can get all the answers we need." Biting her lip, Hermione nodded, closed her eyes for a second, before snapping into what Ron had dubbed her "teacher mode". Neville, Seamus and Ginny, you three go check the quidditch pitch. Ron, Harry and I will patrol around the Black Lake and around Hagrid's hut. If you don't find anything, meet back here in half an hour." She instructed.

"Yes ma'am," Ginny mock saluted her and made a show of marching in the direction of the quidditch pitch, locking her arms in a rigid position and swinging them stiffly by her sides. Seamus and Neville followed suit, minus the marching.

Hermione huffed, "I knew I shouldn't have shown her those movies." She grumbled to herself. Somewhere in the background, a splash sounded, followed by something that sounded heavy landing on the shore.

"Hey, there's something down by the lake!" Ron shouted, having wondered off. He waved his arms and pointed. He squinted, trying to make out what it was but could barely make out a greenish tinge. Ron started jogging towards the figure. "I'm going to check it out!" He shouted.

"Wait Ron! Don't!" He and Hermione started after Ron who of course wasn't listening. Despite all of them having become more wary during the war, Ron was still a dunderhead when it came to these things. Some things never seemed to change and sometimes, he wasn't sure whether he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Ron was a dozen yards ahead of them, he pumped his arm harder in an effort to catch up. Squinting, he made out what looked like a giant silvery fish tail. It was big. As in, almost as tall as Hagrid big. From this distance, he could see that it was about a foot shorter than Hagrid, about seven feet. It's skin was gray and the green hue he had made out before appeared to be the wild ropes of hair on it's head. He couldn't help but think he had seen it somewhere before.

The it raised it's head and glared at him, snarling and baring it's pointed shark's teeth. It's yellow eyes burned with intensity before it shifted its gaze to Ron. Horror dawned on him. Mermaids. From the Black Lake. In his fourth year during the Triwizard Tournament. An onslaught if memories assaulted him. Cedric...Voldemort...Moody... He shook them off.

Hermione gasped. "Is that a-"

"Mermaid?" He finished for her, "yes, yes it is. and if memory serves me right," He examined the creature once more. Yup. It was there. "There's a spear."

"Ron!" Hermione yelled, pumping her arms. He followed suit. "Stop running! Get away from it!" They were a few yards away from Ron who was a few away from the Mermaid. He honestly had no idea how he didn't notice how horrible looking it was or how it was already raising the spear, training it on his chest.

"Ron!" He shouted. Too late. The world seemed to slow down. The spear left the mer's hand and flew towards Ron who's eyes had gone wide with shock. His legs were like lead, not allowing him to run fast enough. Suddenly, a pinky skin colored fleshy arm dropped down between the two, taking the blow of the spear instead. The world spead up again. Arm after arm came falling down on the shore. Water flew everywhere and he covered his face. Grabbing Hermione and running the other way, he was relived to see that Ron had managed to scramble further down the shore, away from the onslaught.

"You all right?" He asked Hermione who nodded.

"Ron, where is he? Is he alright?"

"He's ok," He replied relief tinging his voice. Hermione immediately stood up.

"Where? Where is-sweet Merlin!"

"What?" He asked in alarm.

"It's the giant squid." She breathed. "It looks hurt. It's not moving." He noticed that the arms were indeed tentacles.

"You don't think..."

"No, it's not dead. I'm pretty sure it takes quite a bit to kill a giant squid." She replied firmly. "But whoever did this was powerful." She said grimly.

"You aren't saying that..."

"Yes." She confirmed. "I think it was those three girls." He gaped.

"Your kidding. That's a bit far, why would they even hurt the squid? It's a gentle creature."

"They are muggles or live in the muggle world anyway. How else would they react. But the point is. I think we found out where they went."

There was a pregnant silence that was interrupted by Ron. "Harry! 'Mione! It's the giant squid! Blimey, I don't think anyone's ever actually seen this much of it before!"

He chuckled. "Trust Ron to say something like that in such a situation." He was ignored and instead got a mouthful of Hermione's hair who had whirled around. She stormed back the way they had run from to Ron who looked like he was wondering if touching the squid would be a good idea. He held his finger out a bit before pulling it back and making a face.

"Hey! Do you think it'll feel gross if I touch it? It looks alot worse close up... What do you think Har-"

"Ronald Weasley! You bloddy _idiot_! You had me worried sick! Why are you always rushing into things and never thinking things through. I'm so-"

"Calm down 'Mione, I'm fine now though, see? The squid saved me." He grinned. "Blimey, the squid is so big, you'd think that the first thing _you'd _worry about is memorizing every inch of this thing to study later on." He joked. Hermione sighed and gave up, resigning to hugging him instead.

"I'm just glad your ok." The scene would have been a bit more romantic if a grindylow hadn;t shot out of the water and landed on Ron's head.

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**Ok, I know I said that Bella would be in this chapter, but I really couldn't find a place to slot in the girls in this chapter. It was mainly focused on the HP gang and them trying to solve the 'mystery'.** **I was gonna make it longer, but then I would have written 2 chapters in 1 and I know I totally owe you guys for not updating in so long, but next chapter will be mostly h2o anyway, so please! I'm so sorry!**

**Also, in answer to 'Mermaid want2be', my time zone is also central, but I am currently in Australia as you can see in my profile, so what is your morning is my afternoon, or something like that anyway. I've got a break from school because of this awesome holiday! but i'm not usre how much i can update cos my family has a super day to day schedule planned out on where we're gonna go ^ ^**

**But I do suffer from a but of insomnia, so I might be updating like this again once i get back to america...**

**Thanks again for the reviews!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Cleo POV**

The moment Rikki had spoken, multicolored lights had shot out of the sticks that many of the students seemed to be carrying. On instinct, Emma had held out her hand as if to stop them. She had probably thought something along the lines of 'freeze', or 'stop', because the spell bounced harmlessly off the invisible force field that she had recently gained in her list of powers. Rikki, in her panic, had let out columns of flame from her palm after she had turned into said element. The spells seemed to disappear once they came into contact with the fire, as if it was hot enough to incinerate them.

I on the other hand, had done nothing but stumble back in shock. I soon noticed that Emma had frozen the jets of lights that were being produced from the sticks. I could see students stumbling forward as the weight of an extra few meters attached to their sticks weighed them down. Emma herself had turned into ice on instinct. One thing that we had learned, was that apart from being in water, we always felt safest when we were in our 'elemental forms', as Emma had dubbed it.

On of the jets flew at me and I threw my hand out. It bent around me. I stopped for a moment. One of my new powers was telekinesis, maybe these jets of light were literally jets of light... but...light didn't bend. I had never actually tried to manipulate light before. I assumed it wasn't possible, but here it was. Another jet flew towards Rikki and I threw my hand out once more, willing the jet of blue light to bend and succumb to my will. It did. The light bent around Rikki, but I could feel it going out of control. Hmm. Interesting. Light was a lot harder to control then other objects. Carefully, I bent it in the direction of the ceiling and experimented with it above peoples heads. The light danced around freely for a while before I let it crash into one of the plates of chicken near a student. The student stepped into the chicken just as the blue jet hit it, and the chicken froze, along with his shoe. I giggled as he cried out in alarm.

If Emma could freeze the lights, Rikki could incinerate them, maybe I could turn them to water. It was going to be a bit too tiring if I had to keep track of controlling a dozen energized jets of light at once. _Water_, I thought. I had to dodge the splash that came at me and I ran around to the outside of the doors. Emma stepped back into the puddle and it froze. I noticed the wood of the doors creaking ever so slightly under the temperature of the ice. Then came an idea.

"Emma!" I cried, "I have an idea."

"What?" She yelled back. "I'm kind of busy here!"

"I know! But it needs you to do it. I'm going to fill up the whole doorway with water. A thick wall of water. Then, you two are going to walk through it." I crouched down into a squatting position in order to dodge the barrage of lights.

"What! Are you crazy?" She cried, as another jet of light hit her arm and froze.

"No! After you guys walk, you're gonna freeze it! You know how cold your ice is! It'll definitely give us time to escape, then we can get to Bella and figure out what's going on."

"But the full moon!" She cried.

"Doesn't matter! All we need to do is get to the lake! Don't you remember how dark it was? Even with our fish sight we could barely see our hands."

"But how do we know where to go?" Asked Rikki, who had jumped in between me and an on coming jet of light. I honestly didn't know yet.

"We'll...just swim around for a bit i guess." I mumbled, half serious, half joking.

"And what are are we going to do about that giant squid out there, huh?" demanded Rikki. "In case you forgot, that thing tried to eat us!"

"Look, the most important thing right now, is to get out of here. I am so confused and frustrated. We have no idea what is going on, these people are shooting lights out of sticks for God's sake! Some have fires coming out of them and we don't even know where the hell we are, so can we please just concentrate on getting to the Moon Pool and staying there until we can figure something out?" I nearly yelled, tears starting to form. I was so confused and I was sure they were too, but we couldn't deal with that now.

"Ok. We get it. I feel like that too. We'll just... do what we have to do for now and think of what comes next later." Replied Emma soothingly.

"Yeah, and if we look at the full moon, we won't remember anything. It'll save us a whole night's worth of worrying over Bella and what we're going to do." Rikki joked.

I paused and smiled, before shoving Emma out of the way of another explosion of lights. I crouched down on my knees, right at the entrance to the Hall. "Remember, don't cross the water until the whole door is filled up, or else they'll follow you before you can freeze it. While I'm just sitting here, I'm defenseless, because I want to fill up this doorway as fast as possible, so I'm relying in you two." I reminded them. They flashed me smiles before they turned back to the show of fireworks.

I turned my hands into water and concentrated on the water flowing out of my palms. Soon, it spread to my fingers, and as I stabilized a steady stream, I allowed it to creep up my fore arms and up to my elbows. Soon, the doorway was half way full, when I let the water fall spread from my forearms to my shoulders. I opened my mouth and added that to the cascade. Before I knew it, I was done. Emma and Rikki soon emerged from the barrier. I wasn't sure if it was just because of the barrier, but it was suddenly dead silent on the other side. Then I heard a shout. Using the wind, I shut the door for extra measure before nodding at Emma. In an instant, the door froze, and hopefully, the water wall too. I could've sworn that I heard a few muffled thuds against the wall.

Not wanting to be there any longer, we turned and fled back the way we came. It was a miracle that we even remembered the way. All the halls and corridors looked the same, but somehow, we made it out. In the back of my mind, I noted that the pull of the full moon must have something to do with how we were able to get outside. The pull of the moon was torturous, but a months of resisting it came in handy. Once we got to the edge of the lake, we came to a screeching halt.

"Just..." I began, not sure what to do from here on. I was fairly sure that the ice wall would keep them for a while, but I honestly didn't know what the extent of their 'powers' were, so I couldn't be sure.

"Swim slowly, and don't let go of each me." Said Rikki, taking the lead for once. "I'll try and activate the energy in the moon pool rock that was at the entrance, but I'll only do it once, because that's practically a huge, neon sign, saying, 'The mermaids are back in your territory Mr. Squid!'. Besides, we don't know what else could be living down there."

Emma nodded, then asked, "But how will we know when we're there. Cleo might take out a completely different rock if we only swim in the general direction." That was true.

"Once we touch the wall in the general direction, I'll activate it another time and only if we really need it, a third time." It made sense.

"Who knew you could be so smart," I tried to joke, taking Rikki's usual position.

"I know, I feel like I could graduate from uni with a PhD now." She smirked. We looked at Emma who took the initiative.

"On the count of three." She began. "One," We joined hands and began wading into the water. "Two," The water was up to my chest and we all stopped with three seconds left until we morphed. "Three!" We dived as best as we could into the water. I took a second to relish in the sensation of the change into a mermaid, before I felt the grip of the moon grab into me in full force. I suppose it wasn't as bad as it would be if we were actually in the sea, but it was still torturous. Looking at the full moon was like an addicting drug, even though we never remembered what it felt like. It was hard to explain, it was like a drug that you just _knew _would feel amazing. The best feeling in the world, and it was _pulling _at you, whispering seductively with the promise of something you just _know _will be amazing.

All we could do now, was swim as far down as possible, and hope the lake was deep enough to block out the light of the moon, or who knew what havoc we would wreak. I was on Rikki's left, and I felt her tail brush mine as she jerked towards me when Emma grabbed into her waist, fingers brushing against my side. She had probably raised her right hand in the general direction of the tunnel.

From deep down below, I saw just the faintest of blue, flickering light. I could feel it as well, the call of the moon pool. Seems that when we were in the water on a full moon, the moon pool could still have an effect.

I felt Rikki move in the genera direction of the light and I gripped her hand tighter, before swimming slowly after her, staying slightly behind her. It made me feel better that Rikki, who was the most head strong one of us to be at the front.

The lake was eerily silent, unlike the ocean, where I could feel the soothing current and life thrumming around me. There was life in this lake alright. I could sense a few creatures that meant no harm, but the deeper down we went, the more I could feel the presence of something darker. It somehow felt similar to Rikki, Bella or Emma's presence, but there was something that was darkening it. It was scary and I drew myself closer to Rikki in a mini panic attack. I had never felt so out of my element in water before. Or at least since I became a Mermaid.

The deeper down we went, the weaker the pull of the moon became. It felt like an eternity, and I was sure that we had passed the entrance by now, but we hadn't hit a wall yet. Then I became aware of something. I could now see Rikki's hair. At first I was ecstatic and simply brushed it off, but the deeper down we went, the clearer it became. Was it our eyes? Or was it our surroundings?

Then we hit seaweed. There was a football fields worth of seaweed. Rikki pulled us to a halt. Through the gaps, I could make out a sandy bottom. We looked at each other in confusion. Then we heard bits of a song. It was eery and haunting, yet beautiful at the same time. It sounded a bit similar to the first song I had sung with my 'siren voice', as Rikki had dubbed it, but it was more...haunting...more, evil.

Rikki tugged at us to go investigate, but Emma and I held her back. Emma and I looked at each other fearfully, then at Rikki, who gave an impatient jerk of her head. "_Wimps_" She mouthed at us. I saw Emma's tail fight between the dull colors of black, brown and red, stressfuly, before she followed. I unwillingly followed, but tugged them higher over the seaweed. I was getting too paranoid that something was going to jump out and attack us.

Something loomed ahead. I could see what looked like a giant statue and were those _mermaids_? No, it couldn't be. Mermaids couldn't actually breathe underwater, as much as we wanted to, we wouldn't be able to actually live under water. Besides, these mermaids were like sticks and their tails were so long. They looked to be about two and a half meters in length. Their tail scales were silvery blue, but their skin, as far as I could see, was a sickening grayish color. Then, one turned to us and snarled. It was holding a crudely made pointed spear and was barring it's pointed sharks teeth at us. What got me the most, though, were it's eyes. It's eyes were a terrifying yellow and had slits for pupils.

I resisted the urge to scream as it hurled its spear at us at a terrifying speed for something under water. I swam to the left and was ripped away from Rikki and Emma, who had swum the other way. I locked my gaze with Emma and pointed behind me. She shook her head at me, but I ignored her. The creature screeched at them, nearly deafening me with the high pitched tone. Spying the spear a few meters away, I used my telekinesis to hurl it back at the creature.

Unfortunately, my aim wasn't very good and it did nothing but scratch the side of it's arm. It turned and grabbed the spear out of the water, snarling at me again. I turned and hightailed the other way.

I looked behind me and it was obvious that it wasn't a quarter of my fish speed. I could swim circles around it at the speed it was going. It was a good distance away from me and Rikki and Emma, so I was planning on using the water to force it to fly up and out of the water, when it hurled it's spear once more at me. '_Damn, this thing has a good aim' _I dodged it, but I heard a pained roar from behind me. I turned and screamed, letting out some of my precious air supply. There, was the giant squid, and it was terrifying. I nearly fainted on the spot. Instead, I turned and sped as fast as my tail would let me, back the way I came.

The mer-creature attempted to grab me as i swam passed it, but it had no chance. I morphed into water in an effort to conceal myself from the terrifying squid, and the mer-creature's arm slipped right through me. Rikki and Emma had just arrived and would've swam through me had I not returned to normal a split second before. Their eye's bulged and I covered their mouths and noses to prevent them from loosing part of their air supply like myself.

They assessed the situation and Rikki started to burn one of the squid's tentacles. Even though I was terrified of the thing, I knew it didn't mean us any harm after being in such close proximity with in for a while. When my back was to it, it hadn't taken advantage and tried to swallow me whole, so I stopped her and shook my head, but the damage was done. I winced at the second roar of pain that followed.

A screech followed and I turned around and noticed that the mer-creature was hurtling at top speed towards the surface. The squid was still flailing around and I realized that one of it's tentacles must've sent the thing flying. Then it started towards us. I could see burns littering its tentacles as well as various sticks of ice shaped like cones, each a few meters long.

Looking around wildly, I realized that Emma must've not gotten the message. I really didn't want to hurt the thing that much, but we would never get to the moon pool at this rate. I waved my arms wildly at Emma, and gestured for Rikki to do the same. Our wild flailing seemed to finally catch her attention and she stopped, tilting her head to the side in question.

I motioned for her to stop and get out of the way with my arms. I was gonna blow this thing out of the water. It would eventually slide back in, besides, if those freaky powered people didn't bother with this, they were probably on good terms with it and would more than likely help heal the poor creature.

She quickly retreated, swimming as far back as she could while remaining eye contact with me. I nodded once she was out of the danger zone. Mustering as much will power as possible, I forced a giant current underneath the squid, propelling it upwards. It roared in surprise and somewhere along the way, it toppled upside down. I closed my eyes and concentrated. '_I am the water'. _I was the water, and finally, I felt the current break the surface, blowing the squid, tentacles first onto the surface. I sighed in relief then frowned. The water was quickly warming up. I turned and found Rikki wrestling with a scary looking horned creature. It was a foul green color and had long, skinny fingers that looked brittle, but from the grip it had on Rikki's tail, where quite strong. It had pointy horns on its head and was screeching at Rikki, snapping at her fingers like a rabid dog.

Something cold and hard fell on my head, followed by the green demon's head. I glanced up and noticed Emma trying her hardest not to breathe in as she fought the instinct to pant after a fight. It was obvious she had just wrestled with a similar creature and had frozen the unlucky thing.

The demon grabbing onto Rikki's tail became slightly disoriented. Taking advantage of the situation, she used her tail and flicked it violently away from her. Not waiting another second, she hit it with another blow upwards, following the path of the squid. I heard a screech and felt something grip my tail. There were dozens more of the little sea creatures and they were swimming one after another towards us. I tried using my telekinesis to pry it's fingers from my tail, but that resulted in a sickening snap and it wailed out in anguish. I winced at the disfigured hand before swatting it with my tail in the direction of the one that Rikki had hit.

We quickly learned that as long as they didn't get a grip on you, they were pretty weak and a simple tail-swat would do the job. Demon after demon were blown towards the surface and there was still an everlasting amount. Getting sick of this, I drew Emma and Rikki closer towards me and created a sphere of quickly running water consisting of 5 layers. The first layer spun in one direction , the second another and so on. I nudged Rikki and she nodded in understanding. She raised both her arms and heated what I hoped, the area around the sphere, which would force the demons to flee somewhere else due to the temperature. Through the spinning, I could vaguely see the creatures fleeing and hesitantly stopped the currents.

From then on, Rikki maintained a 3 meter thick sphere of hot water around us. We swam even slower than before to prevent us crashing into the thing. Once we neared the wall, Rikki lowered the sphere and fisted her hand.

An electric blue light cackled somewhere above us. I resisted the urge to sigh. Luckily, we were directly beneath it and just had to swim a few hundred meters up to get there. Since no other sea creatures had bothered us since we dealt the fearsome sea creatures, Rikki decided to keep an ongoing series of flashes from the rock until we got there.

The rest of the journey passed without any more mishaps and I felt a lot safer once I was in the tunnel with the entrance sealed behind me. I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before when we had exited the tunnel. The water here seemed warmer for some reason. It felt more...homey.

Finally we exited the tunnel and the first thing I saw was Bella with a child like look on her face as she swam towards a falling object. Spotting us after she grabbed the circular object, she shoved it in Rikki's face who backed up and hit her head against the entrance the tunnel.

Bubbled exploded from Rikki's mouth and I heard a faint cry before bubbles erupted from Bella's mouth who screamed through the water, "MOOO-OO-OOO-OO-OO-OOO-OOOO-OON!" With an impish look on her face, eyes wide with childish glee.

She turned to Emma and repeated the action. Emma chortled and sped for the surface before she became the world's first fish to drown underwater. Faintly I noticed Rikki following suit, but as Bella turned towards me with a pout, my eyes caught her head, which already had the smallest of scars. Even as I watched, I could see the scar disappearing and I realized that I had discovered another effect of the full moon. It seemed to heal us. I wasn't sure if it would affect us in human form, but I assumed it wouldn't make a difference. Under the moon we sooner or later became fish. Usually.

I grinned to myself and noted to myself to tell the girls. I swam upwards, looking down at Bella and motioning for her to follow. Her eyes lit up and she grinned before racing upwards towards me.

As my head broke the surface, I forgot momentarily about the full moon and didn't notice I was staring at it until Rikki giggled and pulled the fire she had shaped as a dragon the size of Emma, who was sculpting a mini Christmas tree and Santa Clause sleigh complete with reindeer and a mini city with snow falling down over the place, away from my face which had been blocking my view of the moon. The dragon happily snorted fire out of it's mouth and the last thing I registered was a, "Moon belly Santa Clause!" from Bella and a serious grunt of acknowledgement from Emma.

* * *

**A/N: This longer and faster update chapter is to make up for not updating for so long on the previous chapter. My last chapter was a bit longer than most of my chapters, but this is an extra thousand words for you! I know there's not much Bella, but I kept my promise as best as I could.**

**Thanks for the support and reviews, really appreciate it!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Harry POV**

It was quite literally raining Grindylows. The air was pierced with high pitched screeches and Ron yelled in alarm and frantically pried at the creature which looked to be unconscious but was still grabbing onto his hair. Wasting no time, Hermione dragged the swearing Ron towards Harry and out of the line of fire. A few moments later, the hail of sea demons stopped and a few could be seen feebly trying to make their way back into the lake.

"Whoa, what the bloody hell happened here?" Came a voice behind them. He recognized it immediately as Ginny.

"Ginevra Weasley! Mind your language." Hermione immediately reprimanded. Ginny huffed and muttered something along the lines of "yes mum," punctuated with an eye roll.

"Forget the language, 'Mione," grumbled Ron, "I still feel like there's something on my head. What was it anyway?"

"Harry? Just what landed on Ron's head?" Asked Ginny, looking half concerned half amused, "Should I be worried about him gaining more brain damage?"

He grinned. "It was a grindylow." Neville and Seamus chortled and Ginny snickered. Ron grumbled and it was silent for a moment afterwards.

"So...Why exactly did a grindylow land on my unfortunate brother's head?" Asked Ginny.

It was Hermione who answered. "I think we just found our mystery girls." Was Hermione's reply. "Did you lot find anything?"

"Nope."

"Zip."

"Zilch."

"I didn't expect you to after we discovered this." She waved her hand towards the lake. Multiple grindylows were still crawling their way back to the lake at a snail's pace, the squid was as still as ever and he could hear an angry screech from somewhere behind the squid.

"Oh yeah, does any one here speak mer?" He asked hopefully. The recently arrived trio looked at him curiously.

"Great idea Harry," Commented Hermione, "I wonder if Professor McGonagall can." She muttered. Ginny cocked her head to the side.

"Just how much did I miss?"

"Not much, just the world's first shower of magical sea creatures." Answered Ron.

"Ha ha very funny."

"We better head back, we're going to be the last one's back at this rate." said Hermione, already walking back to the castle. "We also need to get help for them and ask for a translator."

"Hey Harry," said Ginny from beside him as they turned to follow Hermione.

"Hmm?'

"I wonder how they figured out how to get back outside in such a short amount of time. Do you really think they're muggles?"

"Honestly, I have no idea, but I don't think they're a threat to us." She looked at him questioningly.

"How so?"

"Well, did you ever notice them actually attacking anyone? They honestly seemed rather confused if you ask me." He said, quite deep in thought. They were purely on the defensive side of the battle. Ginny gestured to the squid and other inhabitants of the Black Lake.

"Not a threat?"

"Well, when you first came to Hogwarts, what was your reaction to the squid?" She paused.

"I was terrified." She admitted.

"You're were raised in a wizarding family that's used to magical creatures. Even if they weren't muggles, they were at least raised in a muggle environment, so you can imagine their shock." He was more thinking out loud at this point rather than explaining.

"I see." The rest of the trip was silent and he used the opportunity to ponder the strange girls.

Once they returned to the Great Hall, they were delighted to see that the ice had been melted of the ancient wood with no harm done. The doors were wide open and McGonagall was at the entrance.

"About time, what in heavens name took you so long?"

"Sorry professor," Hermione apologized, "But we found where the three girls went and some...issues were presented. Say, do you know any one who knows how to speak mer?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, a whole lot of sea creatures were thrown up to shore and one was a mermaid. If we can speak with it, we can find out perhaps what happened."

"I see, unfortunately, I have no knowledge of anyone who can speak the language of the mer."

"What about professor Dumbledore? His portrait, we could bring it down." Ron looked immensely proud of himself, having thought of something before Hermione, who sighed in exasperation before answering.

"The portraits of the Headmaster are kept there through a binding magical contract. I'll bet anything, that Snape doesn't have a portrait of himself hung up in the Headmistress's office, because he was not officially appointed by Dumbledore when he was living. Although the portraits are to some degree a living entity, they are not the person themselves. They're more like a copy of the person, as is the same with other portraits." Hermione answered, sounding like a text book.

"Nicely said Miss Granger. 10 points to Gryffindor." Praised Professor McGonagall. "We can, however, put a simple, animal translating spell on the mermaid." He heard Hermione huff indigently at this, (probably at mermaids being classified under the word, 'animal') before he heard Malfoy's drawl from behind him.

"Granger, we found something of the muggle's, you are the obvious _expert _here, so why don't you tell us what it is?" He sneered as he said the word expert, but his tone was not nearly as bad as it used to be, he noticed. He guessed the war brought out the better in some people.

Hermione grumbled, but perked up when she saw the jacket he was holding. The black leather garment was dangling off a pale finger, whose owner of said finger didn't look as disgusted as he once would've. She rushed over, followed by the rest of the staff and students.

"What is that?" Asked Lavender.

"It looks like leather." Said Neville. Malfoy handed the jacket to Hermione who promptly held it out in front of her and announced that it was a jacket.

"That is...a unique piece of clothing." He heard McGonagall murmur to Slughorn, who nodded.

"I do remember seeing similar items of clothing when in other muggle homes." He muttered back to her. Hermione was digging around that jacket, which had long sleaves and was more of an extremely dark brown rather than a black. She was checking the pockets, when she cried out a triumphant, "Ah ha!"

"Blimey, what is that?" Asked Ron, snatching the device away from her. Everyone crowded around as Ron fiddled with the device before he finally pressed a button at the top, which Harry recognized as the 'on' button for the iPhone 4. "Ah!" Ron cried in alarm as the screen lit up. The crowd shouted in alarm, following Ron's example as the screen lit up, before 'Oooh's and 'Ahhh's filled the Hall. Even McGonagall looked impressed, though she was trying to hide it.

"Settle down, settle down. Mr Weasley, please hand that...instrument back to Miss Granger." Ron grudgingly obeyed and she continued. "Miss Granger, please continue."

With a muttered, "Honestly Ron, it's just a phone," Hermione spoke. "It's one of the girl's jacket and a phone. This proves that they're muggles!" When McGonagall raised an eyebrow, which was followed by many, 'What's a phone Hermione?' and a certain, 'Yes please do tell to those of us who aren't from mud-ggle back grounds.' The word muggle from the latter phrase was mispronounced. Malfoy had very nearly said the insult which caused Hermione to glare at him for a second before clearing her voice and saying, "A phone is a communicating device that muggles use to communicate. They can text, which is a written message, to another phone, which is identified by a unique number that each phone has once a sim card has been placed into the phone, allowing these transmissions to take place. They can also call each other, which is where they dial a certain number with the keypad and enter it, which connects them to the phone that possesses that number."

"What's a keypad?" Asked Ginny. "I don't see any keys on that thing."

"It's a...sort of grid with numbers and sometimes letters on it."

"But, where's the keypad?" Asked Ron, who was staring at the black screen. "It just looks like a glowing piece of...whatever that thing is made out of and silver."

"This is plastic and metal, Ron." She told him and before he could ask what plastic was, she held unlocked the phone, which fortunately had no password protection activated. "This is a keypad." She had gone onto the call app and had held it up for everyone to see. "Now these communication devices won't work here, because Hogwarts has too much magical interference interfering with the signals the phone has to send up to a satellite in order to communicate with another device, not to mention there isn't a cell tower anywhere close." She received many black stares at this, before simplifying it down. "You won't be able to use this to communicate with anyone while in Hogwarts or anywhere in the magical community."

"Why didn't you say so?" grumbled Ron.

"Well if that is all, the rest of the staff and I will be heading down to the Black Lake to consult with the mermaid." Began McGonagall, "The rest of you, if you would kindly follow my patronus to your newly assigned dorm. The password is dimidiam piscis." With a quick _expecto patronum_, she left with the rest of the professors on her heels. The silvery cat she left behind began stalking in the other direction, down the hall, towards a staircase which was moving towards them. The group of eighth years hurried after it.

They were lead up to the sixth floor where they promptly stopped in front of a giant, crystalline statue where the patronus promptly disappeared. The statue was on her stomach and her elbows were resting on her upraised pedestal, that looked like it was carved specifically to look like a rock. The rock was also made of crystal, but was a dark, black color. Her hair was red and long, some of it framing her face, trailing down her elbows and resting on the rock beneath her. She also had a tail, which was ironically, a sea green color. He was reminded somewhat of 'The Little Mermaid', as he observed the figurine. The only thing that stopped it from becoming an exact copy of Ariel, was the fact that she had nothing covering her top half except her hair and the rock that was pressed against her chest.

The crystal she was made of was not bumpy, rather, there were very few ridges and the smoothness of it amazed him. It also took him a while to realize that she was moving. And giggling. And talking.

She had raised her tail and it was swaying slightly back and forth, the tips of the fins curling at the edges almost lazily. She was giggling and smiled flirtatiously at the group, flashing her clear teeth underneath her blood red lips as they approached. It was a bit like watching that ice girl, Emma, move. It was disorienting to say the least. How something so hard and obviously _not _malleable, could move as fluidly as if it was a human with full functioning muscles.

"Password?" Her musical voice seemed to ring slightly as she looked at them from under her lashes. No really, whoever had made her was extremely detailed. He could literally see long, fine, delicately curved black lines on the edges of her eye lids; eyelashes. He noted that her eyes were a pretty green color and her skin was the color of, well, skin.

"Dimidiam piscis." Hermione told her.

"Welcome to the eighth year's common room. Have a nice stay." She stretched her arm out, revealing pretty, pink nails and lowered her tail down to the floor. As they walked around her, she followed them and winked at him before turning back around.

Behind her, her tail had lowered and had pushed down a section of the floor, pushing up another part of the floor which consisted of three steps and allowing a circular section around fifteen feet in wide, to be revealed. The circular section of the wall was resting at the top of the mini staircase and the part of the wall that had been covering the entrance had slid up into the top of the entrance door.

They filed in and Harry took a look around before smiling. He was home. It wasn't too different from the Gryffindor tower. While Ravenclaw and Slytherin had doors leading to the separate dorms and Hufflepuff had tunnels, it had a grand staircase, with there being a wide staircase going up, before it leveled out into a wide platform, and splitting into two on either side of the platform.

The common room itself, was decorated with a few sofas and large arm chairs, accompanied by round and square tables alike. There was a fire roaring heartily, keeping the room warm and causing some of the furniture to have a slightly greenish hue. The color scheme seemed to be light blue and white. The fire and lamps spread around the common room added a pleasant green and golden hue to the furniture. He noticed that some of the tables were made of crystal and had intricate patterns on their legs. He briefly wondered why everything on the sixth floor had some form of crystal tied into it. He had seen the frames of various portraits made in crystal as they had passed through the hall, as well as chandeliers and candle holders. He decided that he would ask Hermione later on.

The floor underneath him was a soft, white carpet that seemed to be enchanted to constantly scourgify itself every 5 seconds. He noticed that students trudging towards their allocated dorms were leaving ugly, black shoe prints on the pristine, surface, which would vanish every few seconds. There were other rectangular carpets placed under arm chairs and tables around the room which were thicker and a light blue that seemed to have the same enchantment on them.

He stared in amazement at the room in front of him before he was snapped out of his stupor by Ron, who had thrown his arm around him and was currently grinning like the Cheshire Cat. "I kinda like it. Whaddya think Harry?" He asked.

"Yeah, it's amazing." He agreed. "Let's go find our dorms." He and Ron climbed up the flight of stairs before they stopped, where a small crowd was standing in front of a piece of parchment that had been hung up on the wall right before the doors to various dorms began. He and Ron pushed his way to the front and read down the list.

**_Dormitory Number 1_**

_Boot, Trevor_

_Finnigan, Seamus  
_

_Hopkins, Wayne_

_Thomas, Dean_

**_Dormitory Number 2_**

_Malfoy, Draco_

_Potter, Harry_

_Weasley, Ronald_

_Zabini, Blaise_

**_Dormitory Number 3_**

_Corner, Michael_

_Goyle, Gregory_

_Longbottom, Neville_

_Macmillan, Ernie_

**_Dormitory Number 4_**

___Finch-Fletchley_, Justin

_Goldstein, Anthony_

_Nott, Theodore_

_Smith, Zacharias  
_

**_(AN: I missed out two male students because I wanted four to a dorm equally, but you barely see them in the book. They were: Kevin Entwhistle and Stephen Cornfoot of_ _Ravenclaw)_**

He heard Ron groan from behind him and realised that he had done the same. The professors just _had _to put them with Malfoy and his best bud.

"Great. Just bloody, great." Ron muttered. This was gonna be a long year.

* * *

**Cleo POV**

The odd, yet soothing sensation of waking up with a tail and half my body in water greeted me. The amount of time it took me to remember why I was like this was a lot shorter this time and I noticed Bella awake and looking around, confused. I giggled internally. She had practically been blacked out for almost a whole day.

"What's going on?" She whispered. I gestured to the water and swam out slowly, easing my tense muscles out. Sleeping on sand with no pillow was not the most comfortable of positions. Bella followed suit, and we moved out into the shaded half of the moon pool. It was more like a half cave, the black rock curving over halfway over the moon pool like a giant wave. The back wall was about five meters high with a small, relaxing water fall coming out of the top of the rock and disappearing into the moon pool. It was just like the wall at the back of the moon pool on Mako, when the water tentacle was still a problem, but only when it was dormant. There was small pockets of rock that had over filled and water had tipped out the side. It was beautiful. It was even prettier since the sun was still setting or rising (she guessed the latter) and the golden light was pouring into the opening, shining onto the wall, making the water sparkle prettily.

I leaned my head back, trying to work out the knots and noticed Bella doing the same. "My neck is killing me." She grumbled. "And my head." She added as an after thought.

"Yeah," I answered, "Long story short, we got moonstruck and Rikki tried to teleport us back to Emma's room, but she got moon struck at the last minute and accidentally sent us here I guess." I shrugged. "We still haven't worked everything out."

"We didn't do anything...bad right?" She asked.

"Well...You didn't. You were making," I paused a snickered, "_Jelly moons_." She raised an eyebrow in response.

"What the hell are jelly moons?"

"Exactly what they sound like," I answered, "Moons. Made of jelly." It was silent for a moment.

"...So I made moons out of jelly. How fascinating." We stayed in a comfortable silence for a few moments. I lifted my tail up so that I was floating on my back. "What were you guys doing."

"We were trashing Mako." I groaned, having hoped that she wouldn't ask. She giggled in response. "Hey, better than jelly moons." I grumbled.

She was silent for a moment, trying to suppress her laughter. "I'm going to wake them up. We need to find away out of here and get some Panadol for my head." She grunted. I grabbed her wrist, stopping her. I shook my head.

"Don't. They've been through a lot. They need the sleep and so do I, but just lying here like this is fine. I'll explain everything to you." She paused, before acquiescing. "Get comfy." I warned. She nodded and lay back beside me.

"So what happened?"

"Well, you've been knocked out or moonstruck for the past..." I paused and counted in my head. "I'd say twenty hours or so?" She gaped. "Yeah, we think that you hit your head when we landed. Right now, we think that we're either in the USA or UK. Emma recons UK, and if that _things_ accent had anything to go by, it's UK."

"What thing?" She asked, confused.

"Well, this place is weird. We swam out of here through this tunnel at the bottom of the pool. There, instead of the sea, we were met by this really dark lake. As in, can't even see your hand dark. Then there was this massive squid, we thought it was trying to eat us at first. On the way back, there was this...mermaid. But it wasn't a mermaid. It had green hair and a silver tail and she could breathe underwater. She was about two and a half meters long and the only bit about her that looked remotely humane, was the fact that her eyes and head were the right way on. There was also this...water demon _thing_. It had these really strong hands and there were hundreds of them."

"Wait," She interrupted. "You're missing out the part where you got out. What happened then? Where were you?"

"I was getting there. When we were out, dry and safe on land, there was this castle."

"Castle?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, it looked ancient, but it wasn't in ruins. When we went in, we were attacked by this ghost thing that was half transparent, half not. It could grab things and stuff, but we went through it if it wanted us to. I think we scared it off pretty good though." I smirked at the look that had been painted on the devil's face. Then I remembered what had transpired after that and it slid off my face.

"What's wrong?" Bella asked, concerned. "You ok?"

"Yeah fine. There are people living in that castle Bella. Weird people. Rikki and Em got in a fight, you see. And when we saw these people, they looked like students and there were hundreds of them, all eating and chatting, but they all attacked us. We might've gotten in, but there was no security or anything. We didn't even know there were people in there! But the weird thing is, they were attacking with sticks." Bella turned her had towards me dubiously.

"Sticks. What's so scary about that. Yeah, it's a bit weird, but not something you should be-"

"No!" I cut her off. She looked startled, but I ploughed on. "They were shooting these...lights out of them and when I controlled one and forced to land somewhere else, it froze the thing. The sticks were also emitting things like fire and when they hit Rikki, they just disappeared! When they hit Em, they froze! I could turn the light into water! Light doesn't do that!" I cried on the verge of hysteria. I was already upright, ignoring the protests of my stiff muscles. Bella was also swishing her tail gently back and forth in the water.

"It's ok, I get it, I believe you. You haven't had much sleep, you need to calm down." She said softly, wrapping an arm around my shoulder. I vaguely registered her hardening some of the water in the center of the moon pool into a large circle, capable of fitting the two of us, lying down side by side on it, probably with half our tails hanging off the side. A bit less than one half of the edge of it had an extra meter attached to it. The extra meter was sloping gently up, efficiently keeping the water off one side of the circle.

There was a larger stem that extended down to the bottom of the moon pool, forcing it to stand still and not drift off. She molded two smaller spheres in the water of that unique substance and shaped them into rough rectangles about the size of sleeping pillows, only thinner. She then lifted them to the edge of of the moon pool and placed them on the mini shore line. She then lifted a large glob of softer jelly from the water and lead me slowly to the blocks at the edge of the moon pool, the jelly following her.

This was what I loved about Bella, she was the best at calming us down in times like these. Every time Rikki and Emma argued, she would either turn it into a joke or leave them to dish it out while comforting we spent time together, only jumping in when necessary.

She placed my hand on one of the blocks and told me to hold on. I started paying more attention now, having calmed down slightly. Bella just had that calming aura around her. I gripped the block tightly as it floated up and farther away from the moon pool, efficiently dragging us out and away from the pool.

We were now lying on the pleasantly soft grass. She brought the softer glob of jelly towards the two blocks and split it. She carefully shaped the two blobs around the rectangles so that it resembled a soft, gooey block. Pillows, she realised. Bella was making pillows. She grinned when she noticed Cleo's look of understanding flash across her face.

"Let's relax more comfortably shall we? Could you help dry me off?" She asked, gesturing to her tail.

"No problem." I lifted the water off both of us and we were human once more. Before we had gained more powers, I hadn't been able to lift the water off of us so easily. The amount of small droplets were hard to control and most of the time, my control was lacking and I only ended up causing more water to spill from the small beads.

Bella's pajamas were similar to mine but were a bit more...modest. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't some girl who liked revealing clothing, the nightie I was wearing was just my most comfortable. I hated the feeling of being restricted while I was sleeping. Bella wholly agreed with me, but she had taken a liking to over sized shirts. According to her, they made her feel safer and she preferred the warm.

I looked up at the sun and estimated that it was about ten o'clock, give or take. "Well what are you waiting for?" asked Bella. I turned around and noticed she had taken off her pale yellow shirt and had placed the jelly-pillow inside it, wrapping it around like a pillow case and tying it off on both sides. Thankfully, her back was to me and she had wrapped her arms around her front. She stepped onto small circles leading to the center of the moon pool, her make shift pillow hovering above her. She reached the platform and turned around, hugging her pillow to her chest, blocking it, thankfully, from view.

Over the past few months, we had been working on not relying on our hands too much. We had tried focusing more on our mental will and it was paying off. Big tasks, of course, required more concentration, and the familiar use of arm movements helped with that. They seemed to add more physical energy into what they wanted which seemed to make it more effective. It was easier to manipulate their elements using their bodies.

I gaped at her. She smirked back at me, knowing my prudishness. The one time I had let Nate talk me into wearing something 'short and tight', I had been in a state of panic and hadn't even noticed what I was wearing. I had gone home, taken a look in the mirror and nearly passed out. I still couldn't believe I had worn something like that in front of so many people. Pajamas were different. They gave me a feeling of home. For some reason, it felt completely natural to wear the pajamas that I wore.

Bella smirked and turned around. I grumbled, but consented. I turned around so my back was to her for extra measure. Facing the trees, I gulped. What if there was someone out there? I stood stone still for a few moments, listening, but there was nothing. I slowly took my nightie off and held it against my chest, listening for anything. Hearing and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, I kneeled down and started wrapping the garment around the squishy block, cursing the fact that I never wore bras to sleep. They were just so uncomfortable. Finally tying down the last end, I stood and admired my work, holding the floral patterned pillow out. It was surprisingly soft and she realised the need for a hard center-it would've been too floppy had it not had one.

"I'm done, don't look." I called out, just loud enough for her to hear and I could've sworn I heard a muttered, "prude", which was promptly ignored. I hugged the surprisingly soft pillow to my chest and realised the need for a hard center-it would've been too floppy without one. I stepped cautiously on one of the stepping stones, testing to see if it would hold my weight. It stayed glued firmly to the water's surface. I stepped onto the next one and the one behind me disappeared. I whipped my head up to glare accusingly at Bella.

"That thing covers more of your front than your bikini, Cleo." She sighed. I huffed but continued forward more confidently this time. When I reached the platform, I stepped down on something squishy and nearly fell in the water. I looked down to see that Bella had coated the top of the platform in soft, half a meter thick layer of jelly. When I fully stepped down and pulled one hand from my pillow to really get a feel of it, I realised why the need for casings on our pillows were necessary. If I were to press my face into the stuff, it would feel suffocating. The cases provided a firmer cover and helped with the needed stiffness of the jelly. On the body it was ok, and I placed my pillow down with one hand, the other covering my _sensitive_ areas. I leaned forward and placed my fore arms on the pillow, finally relaxing as the jelly bubbled up around my chest. I heard Bella snicker as she pointedly used two hands to plant her pillow beside mine.

I rolled my eyes despite my blush and turned to look at her once she was settled. "What are we going to do about food?" I asked her. She opened her mouth to answer I heard something. Bella and I snapped our heads behind us in the direction of Rikki and Emma. We stayed still for a few seconds, listening, when we heard it. The sound of hooves beating against the ground coming closer and closer. Rikki and Emma had woken by now and were looking at us in confusion. I put a finger to my lips in a shushing motion and I crept backwards, imitating Bella.

The sound was getting louder and louder, sounding like a crescendo of drums. Bella and I had slipped into the water now and she gestured for Rikki and Emma to do the same. Obeying Bella's silent command, they swam towards us and I noticed Bella molding a hard dome over the platform. Rikki raised an eyebrow at this and I whispered, "Later."

"How do we cover this up?" Asked Bella, panicking slightly as the rumbling drew nearer. I could tell they were still quite far off, but the mere thought of being discovered was terrifying.

"Vines!" Emma hissed, thinking quick and switching on her 'bossy mode'. Despite Rikki having dubbed it in such a negative way, I was eternally grateful for Emma being able to think under pressure. "We need leaves and the longest strands of grass you can find, but any will do. Cleo, you stay here at the edge of the moon pool. Make a pile of each separately. Don't worry about the leaves, Cleo, use one of your abilities to grab them from the trees. We need enough to go over the back of the cave and over the entrance. Bella and I will collect the grass, Rikki will meld them together, make one big long rope. Don't stop, just keep melding. Since collecting leaves with Cleo's abilities will be a lot faster than any of the others, as soon as your done Cleo, start helping Rikki by melding the leaves into the vine. After, we'll lay it over and cut it off when it reaches the water." Emma commanded, looking each of us squarely in the eye before saying, "Ok, get to it!" The interesting thing that we had discovered, was that as long as we kept the shape of whatever we had turned into our element, we could force it together and make them one. Some of the results were rather interesting, like when I was curious and turned my book and pencil into water and stuck the former through the middle of the latter. When I allowed them to return to normal, I hadn't been able to open the book much-the pages had melded with the wood of the pencil. I had tried to pull it back apart, but that only resulted in a splash of water when I had let go. Of course, this only worked for Rikki and I. Emma couldn't force ice and ice together and Bella's soft jelly would loose it's form as soon as you put something through it.

Rikki and I swam to the edge of the moon pool after Emma and Bella. The two pulled themselves out of the water, using their tails to give them an extra boost. Bella swung her tail over the side and onto the sand and Emma followed suite. Rikki quickly steam dried them and they were up and running. Emma raised an eyebrow at Bella's state of dress, who shrugged, not bothered at all that she was running in nothing but her underwear. Rikki turned to me as well. I shook my head before calling out to Emma before she disappeared after Bella.

"Em, how should I put them together?" She looked around and snatched a small bunch of leaves from the grass behind her before running back to me, dumping grass in front of Rikki. She placed on leave on the slightest angle tilting towards the left, and the next one above it, covering the stem with part of the leaf and tilting it the other way. She did this with a few other leaves before running off. I studied it for a minute before looking back up at the trees. I just needed a good branch. There.

Holding out my hand, I scrunched it up in the familiar claw shape and made a slicing motion with my hand, focusing on the base of a branch high up in the sky. The cut limb started falling and about a dozen meters from the ground, I use telekinesis to stop its fall and bring it slowly towards me. I looked at Rikki, who had made it up to about three meters by now. I noticed that her hands had morphed into fire and the pile of leaves in front of her were fire. Every now and again, an ice or jelly bowl would float over and tip it's contents over the pile of fire-leaves. Rikki's eyes would flicker up and the falling leaves would turn to fire a they descended towards the pile on the floor. She would reach out and grab a leaf before connecting it to the rope in her hand and pinching the two together and turning back to normal. I shook my head, her control was amazing. I noticed that the hand holding the rope of grass was not fire and noted that Rikki couldn't be affected by her own fire. I wasn't sure about other fire, but it was amazing any way.

Getting back to the task at hand, I pushed the giant branch back onto the grass. Resting my eyes on the top section, I focused there, before twitching one of my fingers and snapping the stems of roughly a hundred leaves. I brought the pile of green to my right, placing it slightly to the left. I didn't want it hindering my work. I repeated this process another fifty more times before there were only a few stray leaves left. I decided to take a leaf out of Rikki's book, no pun intended, and turn all the leaves into water. I smiled, pleased at my control when I could lift one up with a water phased hand.

Grabbing the end of Rikki's now twenty meter long rope, I quickly got to work. I turned about a meter of the rope on my end into water and lifted it up, keeping some of it flat and still on the surface of the water, otherwise it would be pulled away from the rest of the vine. I grabbed a leaf and placed it on the rope on a slight angle like Emma had demonstrated. An improved idea popped into my head and turned about a meter worth of rope into water, lifting half of it up into the air and lining them up on either side of the water rope. Then I pushed them into the rope and the slight current in the leaves that always came with my water, started flowing in sync with the current in the rope. I looked to see a bowl of ice about half the size of the moon pool back at Mako float over. Rikki's eyes flickered over to it, then to me. She appraised my current system and seemed to decide it was a better method. She began lifting small piles of the fire onto her rope and straightening it out before repeating.

I smirked, but now wasn't the time. Then another bowl zoomed passed me. How were those two working so fast? I turned the rope back to grass before turning and dragging it to the edge of the rocky opening. I placed the few meters that I had accomplished so far down onto the sandy shore, hoping that the two girls would be able to access it easier later on. Out of curiosity, I peered around the edge of the rocky wall and my eyes popped. Emma and Bella were a few meters behind the tree line and I could see Emma freezing a large area of grass while Bella use a hardened blade of jelly the length my arm to swipe on the ground, effectively breaking the mini icicles. As the blades if ice jumped over the Bella's blade, Emma lifted them over to the giant bowl. She had another behind her while the one that had just visited Rikki floated over my head and sped back to her. Out of all of us, no one could fault Emma's control over her element. She was a pro.

I turned back to see Rikki had made it over the hundred meter mark, I looked over at my measly five meters and cursed. I needed to get a move on. The next minute passed in a blur. I swear we had a kilometer of rope and going. I had no idea I could work so fast. I had quickly caught up to Rikki and we each had a third of the rope caught in the clutches of our element. It was a whirlwind of water leaves on my side and a storm of fire grass on hers. By now, I was sure there was enough grass. The grass pile was half the size of my leaf pile. That meant we had about the same amount left. We probably had enough to make another five hundred meters of rope and as the bowl flew back, I turned around and lifted some water out of the moon pool. I made the sentence: "NO MORE GRASS NEEDED. COME BACK NOW. START CUTTING ROPE." with the water and sent it after the bowl to the two in the trees.

I looked at the tangle of leaves and barely visibly grass on the shoreline and turned it to water. Careful to keep it's form, I straightened it out as much as I could before getting back to work. Rikki's eyes flickered up to the pile of leaves that were quickly lessening and began working even more vigorously. We were almost done. Sort of. I raised both hands and began pulling the leaves towards the rope faster and faster. It was quite amusing to see fire and water working so well together. My heart was racing and I barely noticed Bella and Emma pulling at the rope and soon our piles had lessened by half the amount.

Emma was in the pool behind me now and was turning the bits of the rope that touched the water into ice, before snapping it and turning it back to normal. Rikki and I moved closer as the rope making drew to an end. I bit my lip so hard I was surprised it didn't bleed. Then we were ten centimeters apart. Five centimeters. Rikki finished and flopped onto her back.

I placed the last leaf right at the end of the rope and nearly cried for joy. Then I noticed the giant tree branch sitting outside the moon pool. "Shit!" I swore, though I could barely hear it over the thundering of the hooves. I was panicking now and I quickly sent it up into the branches of one of the trees.

"Cleo!" shouted Bella over the edge of the rocky cave mouth. "You need to stick these vines into the ground! Now!" I barely heard her over the shouts and thundering hooves.

I pushed myself out of the water, hurriedly pulling the water away from myself, completely forgetting about my state of dress. I ran over to the back of the moon pool and turned the first centimeter of the rope into water as well as the ground lining the back of the moon pool. "Go!" I hissed at Bella, who had finished her job. She nodded before letting out a quick, "Hurry Cleo!" and jumping over the edge, trying to make the splash as soft as possible. I ran along the edge, making sure each rope was in and connected to a bit of ground and grass before letting the power turning the solid matter into water go. I ran around and dived into the moon pool, turning into water, not allowing any splash to be heard as my half naked form morphed into a mermaid, just as I saw a hoof appear out of the tree line, shouting accompanying it. I swam underneath the thick curtain of leaf and grass before I resurfaced as a normal skin and bones. I pointed to the back of the pool and we silently swam to the back before lowering ourselves into the water. We left everything above the bottom of our noses out of the water in order to listen for anything. I was holding all the water still. Even when we moved, not a single ripple lived to see more than a few centimeters.

I listened as the thundering hooves came to a halt. We had made the curtain of leaves thick enough to block out everything but a few stray gaps. I heard the soft padding of a horse on grass coming towards the pool. I saw a face through the few small gaps, trying to peer through the foliage. I stifled a gasp and pulled Bella who pulled Rikki who pulled Bella, behind the platform, which had been moved by Bella while she was creating the protective dome around it and under water. It took all my will power to not let go of the water that was keeping our movements hidden.

I resurfaced silently and my three friends followed. Then a deep voice commanded.

"I know you're here, _fish_. Come out before I make you."

* * *

**AN: Wow, 7,229 words. That's 11 pages by the way, size 10 font.**

**And I know some of you might think the half naked thing is a bit much, but there will be no lemon in this fanfic. I just wanted to add to the 'living in the forest/wild' atmosphere. Hope you didn't mind ^^**

** Think of it as a special since it might take me a while to update again. As well as how early this update is ^^**

**Love you all for reading!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Cleo POV**

"I know you're in there." He taunted. Another set of hooves sunk into the sand and I heard a newer voice, one that sounded a lot kinder.

"Come now Magorian, they're never going to listen to you like that. Here's how it works." The new voice cleared his throat and said, "We do not appreciate people trespassing on our territory. Please show yourselves." Seriously? Rikki seemed to agree with me.

"Like hell!" She hissed. "All that hard work." She muttered. I hushed her and it was silent, before Emma whispered as softly as she could, pointing at the water.

"Air bubble. Now." I caught on to her and we sank below the surface. I created a large pocket of air around our heads with one hand, tensing my other to hold onto the ripples. The bubble was big enough to fit all four of us as if we were lying down, so we wouldn't run out of air or need a tube connecting to the surface, which would allow the creatures on the other side to hear us.

"What are we going to do?" Asked Bella.

"I think I have an idea, but I'm not sure..." Began Emma.

"What is it?" Asked Rikki eagerly. "I say we go out there and scare them off with-"

"No." Emma cut her off. Rikki pouted and stuck her nose in the air childishly. "We don't know how many are out there and these weird people, we don't know if they own those...light-throwing things. We need something that we know will incapacitate at least half of them." I didn't like where this was going.

"You don't mean-" I began.

"Sorry Cleo, it's the only thing I can think of."

"You mean, get Cleo to sing?" Asked Bella.

"Are you crazy?" Rikki almost shouted and I clamped my hand over her mouth. We may be underwater, but it wasn't sound proof. Despite my actions, I had to agree with Rikki. Emma was out of her mind. "We'll either have a drunk Cleo on our hands and oh, what was the other option? Oh yeah! She goes psycho and wants to eat any human she can get her hands on! Don't forget the fangs! She grows fricking _fangs_."Rikki growled the last part out.

It was true. It seemed when I got moonstruck for the first time in my life, I had been singing and had been acting half drunk. **(AN: Season 1)** That seemed like the better option now that we looked back on it. The other thing I could have turned into for a full night, was a blood thirsty maniac. When I went into 'siren mode', as Rikki had dubbed it with her ever famous naming abilities, I grew fangs and sung to literally lure men and sometimes women, towards me. Then came the part where I tried to eat them. One time, I had apparently grown claws too. It was like I had 'turned into a full on siren', courtesy of Rikki.

Luckily, I didn't seem to have any interest in eating my mermaid friends. Just my boyfriend. And their boyfriends. And their boyfriends friends. You get the point. But hey, there was only a fifty percent chance I would turn into a bloodthirsty freak. Joy.

"I think it's a good idea." Bella piped up. I opened my mouth to talk some sense into the two temporarily crazy blondes before I was interrupted. "Think about it. If you _do _turn into a psycho killing machine, they're gone right. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe not." Bella looked slightly queasy, obviously not having thought it through. I nodded. I didn't want to be digesting human flesh. No siree.

"How about this, we go out there and talk to them." Three pairs of eyes stared at me. "What?"

"You know, Emma, I think you're loosing your touch." Rikki smirked. Then an arrow flew through the water, missing Bella's head by inches. I shrieked. Bella shrieked. Rikki gasped and inhaled a mouth of water that came from Emma's startled jerk.

"Loosing my touch eh?" Asked Emma shakily.

"Come on, let's hear what they have to say." Bella said wearily. Rikki began swimming out of the bubble and I grabbed her.

"What are you doing?" I asked. She raised an eyebrow at me and I formed a tube, the width of my shoulders, and extended it out and on to the other side of the curtain of make-shift vines we had worked so hard on. I looked at Emma, motioning for her to speak. She was the best at this kind of diplomacy any way.

She cleared her throat nervously before declaring in a clear voice, "Who are you? What do you want?" I could hear some murmurs, probably curious about the huge, gaping hole that had opened up in the middle of the pool.

The same voice that we had heard calm the voice identified as Magorian earlier answered. "My name is Firenze. We simply want to know what you are doing in our territory."

I looked at Emma who looked back at me. I made a wait sign and swam out of the pocket of air. I peeked through the leafy curtain and stifled a gasp. The man wasn't a man. Well he was, but only the top half. He had white hair and a normal human body, but his bottom half was a horse. Literally. He looked like a centaur from one of the picture books that kids liked. His horse half was the color of a palomino horse and he had a bow and quiver slung across his back. I ducked down under water and reported my findings, blocking the tunnel of water temporarily.

"What?" Asked Emma, "Open that tunnel back up." She demanded. Once it was unblocked, she called out more confidently. "We would first like to know what you are, sir."

"You do not know what I am?" He sounded slightly offended. "The planets did not warn us of any such thing happening." He muttered. "We are centaurs. We have shown ourselves to you, so please show yourselves to us. It is more polite to speak face to face, even in our race."

I closed up the tunnel. Emma hesitated. "I supposed we have to."

"What, why?" Asked Rikki.

"That's how these things work." She grumbled. "We're never going to get anywhere if we stay stubborn." She glared at her pointedly.

"Fine, but I say that only two of us go up. They don't know how many of us there are, anyway." Rikki argued.

I nodded. "I'll go. There's a chance he's seen me already, and Emma, so he recognizes her voice. You two go as far back as you can and just listen. If they attack, just defend from there."

"We sound like we're going to war or something." Mumbled Bella amusedly. I grinned, it was quite true.

"Ok, I'm dropping this bubble now. Ready?" I nodded before letting the water enclose our heads. I nodded my head at Emma and we swam out towards the surface. Our heads broke the water and I heard Emma and Firenze gasp.

"I have never seen a mermaid as a creature of the light. You look nothing short of a foal becoming of age." He said breathlessly.

"You're a horse." Emma blurted. This seemed to snap Firenze out of his daze.

"A horse!" He spluttered angrily, his horse half pawing at the ground and his tail flicking angrily. "I am nothing of the sort." He snarled. These creatures seemed to have a lot of pride.

I decided it would be best if we stayed on their good side. "Centaur." I said. He appraised me in a slightly approving manner. "I didn't know they existed." I looked at Emma.

"I guess if we exist, they can too."

"You speak as if you are surprised that another magical being such as myself exists." He remarked.

"Well, where we come from, there's no such thing as-did you just say magical?" Asked Emma.

"Enough chit chat." Growled Magorian. He was the face I had seen through the vines earlier. His skin was a lot darker than Firenze's and his horse half was chestnut. He looked a lot more hostile than Firenze. Emma and I glanced at each other, a look of understanding passed her face and I imagined mine. We had to tread carefully from now on. "Show the rest of you. There are more of you. Why do you hide them." He growled.

"Why do you hide yours?" Emma asked boldly. "You're armed, we're not." Magorian grunted in response.

"We have no obligation to show ourselves to you."

"Neither do we." I chipped in. He glared at me and I stared back, allowing the water to tumble restlessly behind me. His eyes widened and he backed off slightly.

Firenze was obviously the more diplomatic one and decided to speak up. "We shall strike a deal. We shall reveal ourselves on the condition that you do as soon as we do. Settled?" I glanced at Emma out of the corner of my eye and she nodded.

"Ok." I said. They turned their back and let out a sort of neigh, but it was mixed with a human shout, making it sound a lot coarser.

As soon as they turned their back, Emma whispered to me. "You should've said 'very well'."

"Well _sorry_. I'm not one for fancy talk." I whined back.

As soon as the two cried out in that shout of theirs, hundreds and hundreds of centaurs appeared from the tree line. Emma and I gaped in awe, I swear my jaw was open. "Pinch me." Whispered Emma. "Ow!" She grumbled. I snickered.

It was honestly quite majestic and I looked back at the vines separating us and...well, two other mermaids. It seemed a bit anti climatic to me. Magorian turned back to us and seemed extremely pleased at our reaction. At least we were getting on their good sides better. Maybe, if we left on civil terms, we could ask for some food. My stomach growled painfully in agreement. Emma cleared her throat.

"Uhhh, well, wow. Um you guys look really tough." I didn't think that Magorian was capable of a smile, but he was smiling now. He seemed pleased that we were rendered speechless at his race. By now they were quite close and I could hear gasps of astonishment from some as they stared at us and our tails. I heard even more gasps as my tail flushed red in embarrassment.

Part of me was basking in the attention. It was nice to know that people, even if they were half horse, thought that having a tail wasn't monstrous.

"We have kept our end of the deal." Reminded Firenze. I picked my jaw off the ground and nodded nervously.

"Er, guys?" I called out. I heard exclamations as Rikki and Bella glided forward. Rikki whistled.

"I see we're not the only half animals out there." Magorian looked quite offended at first at being referred to as a 'half animal', but he settled as he realized that she had named herself one and assumed that it was a 'good thing'. I sighed. She was lucky.

Bella was silent with shock and had stopped swimming, coming to drift on her stomach as Rikki left her behind. I sighed and wrapped and arm of water around her out stretched arms, pulling her beside Emma. Shouts of surprise were heard and I snapped my head up in alarm when I saw bows pointed at me. Magorian held up a hand and said, "It is not harmful." Once the murmuring had quieted down, Firenze began speaking.

"As for our previous question, would you please answer?"

"We honestly have no idea where we are." Emma told him. He raised a white eyebrow. "The moon..." she hesitated. Rikki nodded at her to continue. "Well, you see, when there's a full moon, one glance at it and we loose our minds and are driven purely by instinct. We...loose control of ourselves." She said hesitantly.

"Basically, it's like we're werewolves, only, mermaid form." Rikki clarified.

"How do you know of werewolves? You said that there was no magic where you are from." Growled a new voice. I looked towards the sound and saw a dark chest. The new speaker had a black horses body as well as black hair and a beard. He looked as fierce as Magorian.

"Seriously? Werewolves exist? That's just a saying!" Cried Rikki.

"Calm yourself Bane." Commanded Firenze before turning back to us. "Continue."

"Well, we call it getting moonstruck, and Cleo," She pointed at me, "Bella and I got moonstruck." she pointed at Bella then herself. "On a full moon, we usually board up one of our houses and have a sleep over." Looking at the centaur's confused faces, she hastily added, "We go to one of our houses and sleep there for the night." Various sounds of understanding were given and she continued. "Because we got moonstruck, Rikki," She pointed to said person, "Tried to bring us back. We have another moon pool, just like this one on an island called Mako. Usually when moonstruck, we are drawn to these moon pools. Rikki has the power to teleport things from one place from another." She explained.

"When I was transporting them however," Rikki took over, "I got moonstruck halfway through and we woke up here. We went through this lake with scary creatures in it and up to this castle. There were people there with sticks that threw lights and fire." Once we got back to the moon pool, we were moonstruck once more."

"But full moons happen only once a month. Why were you moonstruck twice?"

"We live in Australia."

"Where?" Asked Bane dubiously.

"Australia. Never heard of it? Um, it's a place halfway around the world and our time is ahead of here, so when we got here, it was morning where we were from and night here."

"I see. So that storm was you last night?" Asked Firenze.

I looked around. There were no traces of any sort of trashing of the forest around us. I looked up at the trees and stared guiltily at the dead looking branch I had snapped off, hanging off the edge of another one. I hoped it didn't fall. Then I remembered what I had seen before I looked at the moon.

"I don't think it was us." I said. The girls looked at me. "Well, Bella was making jelly moons again and Rikki was making fire dragons and Emma... You had mini ice houses and snow and...Santa Clause." It was silent before Rikki burst out laughing.

"Ha! Emma! Santa Clause!" I grinned

"Yeah, it was complete with a sleigh and reindeer too."

"Wait, that monstrous fire creature was yours?" Asked Bane distastefully. "And those flying reindeer with the fat man?"

"Don't forget the snakes." Added Magorian. "There were flying snakes the size of a tree made of water. Some had various heads."

Bella looked about ready to faint. "Remind me not to get on your bad sides." She muttered to Rikki.

Emma wasn't paying attention to her and was gaping at Magorian and Bane in shock. "Seriously?" She asked before turning to me. "Just leave out the part where they're giant and were attacking things!" She grumbled at me.

"They weren't big! I said _mini_ in case you forgot."

"There were creatures made of lightning as well." Murmured Firenze.

"Ahaha..." Rikki began nervously. "That would be me..."

"Forget those creatures, I'm sure the storm was you." Firenze insisted. "It was an unnatural occurrence. The clouds showed no sign and a while into the full moon, we saw thunder clouds rolling over the forest, heading towards Hogwarts."

"Well if these young ones can make elemental creatures, I would wager they can make storms appear." Snorted Bane.

"...Did you just say Hogwarts? What on earth is a Hogwart? Sounds like a pig with pimples." Rikki muttered the last part to her self.

"It is that castle you mentioned before. Where the people had _'sticks that throw lights and fire'._" He answered.

"Huh, guess even our moonstruck selves were angry at them. We didn't ruin it or anything did we?" Asked Rikki.

"No. Some of our spells saw wizards putting up barriers against the tornadoes and lightning."

"Tornadoes and lightning? Great." Muttered Emma, glaring at us.

"Hey!" Rikki cried indignantly, "I bet there was snow and hail too! Right?" She looked at Firenze.

"Yes, indeed there was." He chuckled. Rikki cast a smug look at Emma.

"Wow am I glad that I don't have your weather powers." Bella cut in.

"How do we know you are telling the truth?" Roared Bane suddenly. Shouts of agreement were heard from the crowd of centaurs. A tanned centaur stepped forward. He had a chestnut horse half and a reddish tail, accompanied by red hair and a beard.

"I for one believe their tale. Such young one's would not be able to spin such a web of lies." This one seemed a lot more gentle than the rest of the centaurs.

"I agree with Ronan." Proclaimed Firenze.

"I think they should demonstrate their _abilites_ to us." Said Bane.

"Fine." Growled Rikki.

We huddled together for a second. "Um..." began Bella.

"Rikki, get them to shoot an arrow at you from a far away distance. Make sure you're as far to the left of the moon pool as possible. When it is roughly halfway down it's path to you, I want you to teleport it so that it's in front of Bella, not too close, the same distance as it was when you teleported it. Bella, you'll be as far right as possible. Bella, you'll then phase through the arrow and I'll be standing right in front of the vines behind you-plenty of space. Then Cleo, you'll stand next to me on my left and when I've frozen the arrow in place, use your telekinesis to move back into one of their quivers. Carefully." She added as an after thought. We were silent before we made a silent agreement to trust Emma.

"But wouldn't they want to see our 'storm powers'?" Asked Bella.

"I think they believe is on that. They confirmed for themselves that those clouds before we arrived weren't storm clouds." She replied. We glanced at each other before splitting to our assigned places.

"Ok, shoot an arrow at me." Smirked Rikki. Outraged shouts were heard.

"Maybe the moon drove them crazy for good." Muttered Magrorian. Bane, on the other hand, consented willingly.

"Very well."

"Now watch carefully." The silence seemed extremely dramatic as Bane fitted an arrow onto his bow and aimed at Rikki. Then he fired.

* * *

**Harry POV**

Harry woke to the sound of a window braking. He bolted out of the bed, tearing the curtains out if his way. "Bloody hell!" Cried Ron. He turned and saw Ron standing outside the window. He looked down to see him clutching his foot. At first he thought it was cut, but then he saw the giant block of ice in front of him. Apparently Ron had stepped down on the thing and he chuckled.

"Vandalizing the school, are we Weasley?" Drawled a voice behind him. He ignored him and turned to the window. The force of the giant piece of hail was enough to make a clean hole in the glass. He could hear the howling of the wind and he vaguely wondered how bad the storm was. Through the window, he had a perfect view of Hagrid's hut as well as the Black Lake. But it was raining so hard now, he could barely make out teachers rushing outside and casting protective wards around the school to keep out the oncoming storm. Usually they would just let it be, but he could see and hear lightning and thunder. He jumped back as one struck the metal frame of the very window he was peering out of.

Another piece of hail the size of his fist smashed through the window. He ducked and he heard a squeal from the door. He looked back and saw Hermione looking in shock at the window.

"You guys too, huh?" She asked. Ron nodded. "Anyway, McGonagall asked all the eight years to first repair any windows on this floor and to move to their previous year's houses and repair their windows if any have been broken. They're all out there placing wards around the school." She frowned, "There are currently three tornadoes surrounding the school, it's hailing and lightning is striking lower places far too often for it too be natural." She shook her head. "Any way, first years a first priority. They don't know proper spells and she wants one person to stay behind in each house common room. After the houses are done, move onto the floors." She glanced at Malfoy and Zabini. "All Hufflepuffs and Slytherins are to go straight onto the floors and repair any damage to the school. Hospital wing first thing. People are hurt and Madmame Pomfrey can't treat students and keep repairing windows at the same time."

"Why?" Asked Ron. He got a huff in response.

"They're all under ground." she told him, rolling her eyes before running out the door to alert the others. Harry looked at his window before uttering a quick, "Reparo," watching as the glass picked itself up and melted back in place.

Ron picked up one of the two blocks of ice that had smashed the window and held it up to Harry. Can you believe the size of this thing?" He asked disbelievingly. Harry shook his head in agreement before donning the first set of robes his hands landed on in his trunk and hurrying out the door behind Ron. He noticed Malfoy getting full dressed and rolled his eyes. Of course it wouldn't be _decent_, if a pureblood were to go outside in a half dressed state.

They made it to Gryffindor tower in record time, only to realize that they didn't have the slightest on what the password was. "Password?" The Fat Lady inquired.

"Don't you remember us?" Asked Ron and he sighed mentally. Typical Ron. "You know, went here for six years, trying to get in now because McGonagall asked us to."

"Password." She repeated. Harry sighed.

"Octo Annis." Hermione's voice sounded behind them. He noticed Neville and a few others rushing behind her as the portrait swung open. "Sorry, I forgot to tell you guys the password." She muttered as she whisked passed them and into the common room. He shook his head and hurried after her, running into Ginny.

"Why hello there Harry." She grinned from underneath him. He mumbled incoherently and jumped up, pulling her up with him.

"Sorry." He said abashedly.

She grinned before she said, "The seventh years, that's me, have already repaired the first year's windows, we're moving onto the others but they're real babies." She grumbled the last part. He looked around and noticed there were tiny first years huddled up against the fire and gaped. The storm wasn't _that _bad. He swore he wouldn't have done this at their age.

"I see what you mean." He nodded, smiling at her.

"I think we have a bit too many Nevilles this year." She whispered in his ear, giggling. He grinned.

"Harry! Stop making goo goo eyes at my sister and get your ruddy ass over here and help!" Shouted Ron from the top of the stairs leading to the boy's dormitories. Ginny blushed before pecking him on the cheek and hurrying towards the girl's dormitories, but not before casting a dark glare in Ron's direction.

He ran up the flight of stairs and joined Ron in the second year dormitories. "Which windows are broken?" He asked loudly, catching everyone's attention. The wind howled loudly and a few fingers pointed in various directions. "Seamus!" He yelled out the door over the howling of the tornado outside. He could see it outside a window that had been fully blown in, the frame the only thing left intact.

Seamus came through the door way, his hair wind blown and messy. "What?"

"Can you repair these windows and make sure they're not blown in again?" He asked.

"Thanks!" Ron smiled cheerfully before dashing out, yanking Harry along with him. They ran along the hall towards the third year dorms when a scrawny browned haired kid came running at them.

"Help!" He shouted in Ron's face breathlessly. "Chase is going to get pulled out the window!" He looked at Ron and they pair immediately ran after the little kid.

"Where." He urged, wishing he could over take the kid.

"Third year dorms." The brown haired kid squeaked as they sprinted passed him. Good thing they were headed there already. They reached the open door and he had to grab the door frame and swing himself inside where they could hear screams of terror as students tried to grab the small blonde, blue eyed boy who was hanging onto window sill. He looked no older than a first year. His whole body was being yanked by the tornado outside the window and Harry could see blood on his fingers, some of it being sucked into the tornado. If his skin hadn't been so tan, he would've thought he was a distant relative of Malfoy's.

The helpless kid was screaming and crying, tears running down his face. Harry noticed his face was cut in many places and noticed there was no glass on the floor. With a sickening jolt, he realised that the glass must've been sucked in after him. The poor kid was lucky none got in his eyes.

"Help me! Please! Someone!"

"We're trying, Chase!" Cried another blonde with blue eyes. She looked an awful lot like the Chase kid and Harry guessed he was his older sister. Said older sister was holding onto a boy with brown hair and matching eyes. It was then that he noticed the human chain that had formed from one end of the room to another. "I can't reach!" She shouted.

Chase sobbed. "I'm slipping!" He cried in panic.

"Hey!" Harry yelled. He was sticking himself to the door frame. He could feel the tug of the tornado as well. "Acio him to you!" He shouted, trying to make himself heard over the howling of the wind.

"What?" Shouted the older sister.

"Acio him!" He bellowed and winced as Ron joined in and despite the howling of the wind, still managed to deafen his right ear momentarily.

"We can't!" The blonde bellowed back. "We all lost our wands! That thing sucked them up!"

"That explains it." Mumbled Ron and despite the situation said, "I just had a mental image of Hermione saying, "Are you a wizard or what?'" He snickered. Harry had to stop himself from reminding Ron that he was the one who said that to Hermione in their first year.

"Get back! All of you! I'm going to acio him to me. Then you lot are going to swing yourselves over to me and Ron and I are going to acio you over here, got it!" He shouted, his throat starting to feel like it was on fire. "Chase!" He shouted. "The boy looked at him. "Just hold tight, don't fight anything. I want you to let go, I'm going to acio you to me, ok?" Chase looked at him horrified.

"Just let go!" He yelled. It didn't seem to matter whether Chase was willing or not, because at that moment, a giant snake head made of water wrapped it's jaws around him and tossed him into the tornado.

"NO!" cried his older sister.

"ACIO CHASE!" Harry bellowed, putting as much force in to the spell as he could. A few seconds seemed like an eternity, but Chase finally came whizzing back, screaming bloody murder along the way. He caught him and Ron yanked him, as he clutched the small child in his arm, pulling them to safety in the hallway. The boy was sobbing and crying and he vaguely registered Ron shouting acios and students come flying towards him.

Chase cried and he tried unsuccessfully to soothe the terrified boy. His bloody fingers were clutching his robe and he body was heaving with huge, wracking sobs.

"Hey, it's ok, you're fine now, see?" Chase looked up at him, still trembling. When he caught sight of Harry's scar, he gasped.

"Harry Potter!" His fear momentarily forgotten. This was probably the first time that his scar had helped him out.

"Er, yeah, I guess so."

"Thank you so much!" His eyes shined. "My sister told me all about you. You came into their hide out last year, Neville Longbottom brought you in and then there was a big war and you killed You-No-Poo." The little boy giggled at his own joke. He guessed that Fred and-No, just George's joke shop was finally rubbing off on sighed sadly as he thought of how miserably George still was. He still ran the joke shop, but new inventions of his were taking twice as long. He was testing things halfheartedly and he could understand why.

Harry could see small signs of improvement and he could just hope that one day, he would be the cheerful prankster he once was. He could still see heartbreak in Mrs Weasley's eyes every time he looked at Mrs Weasley's face when she saw George. He couldn't imagine the pain George felt every time he stepped into their-his joke shop.

"CHASE!" someone shouted and said boy was ripped from his arms. He caught a whiff of long blonde hair and took that as his cue to leave. "You're ok! Come on, let's get you to the hospital wing."

"Blimey Harry, did you see that thing? It was a huge snake! Made of water!" He flapped his arms around for emphasis on huge.

"Yeah, I wonder if it was one of those elemental beasts Hermione was going on about on the train ride." He pondered. "We should really fix that window, but I don't think there's anything left to fix it with." He told Ron.

Ron grinned. "Speaking of Hermione, I bet she's got a spell."

Harry nodded. "I think it's cleared up in the common room for now." It was true, aside from the commotion around them, he couldn't see any other dramas around them.

"Ron! Harry!" Shouted Hermione, sprinting down the hallway towards them. "I heard something happened out here, are you ok?" She asked.

"We're fine, you wouldn't happen to know anything about a spell that makes windows would you?" Asked Ron.

"I can transfigure something into a sheet of glass, but I can't actually _make_ glass come out of my wand like water. Why?"

"Well..." Harry opened the door that Ron had shut and motioned for her to look inside.

"I see...Merlin's beard! It's Santa!" She cried.

"What the hell are you on about Hermione?" Asked Ron, bewildered.

"No, seriously!"

Two heads joined hers and true enough, there was a sleigh with reindeer tied to it, the reigns in the hand of a fat man made of ice. It would have been quite the ice sculpture if it wasn't for the fact that Santa Clause was driving his sleigh into the window, trying to break the wall.

"Incendio!" Cried Hermione. The moving ice sculpture did nothing but steam slightly, hardly affected by the spell.

"Bloody hell! This ice is just like that girl's ice in the great hall!" Ron noted. The tornado seemed to have moved on, so they stepped into the room in order to confront the thing properly.

"Fine, we'll just have to blow the damn thing up." Scowled Hermione.


	9. Chapter 9

**Harry POV**

"Yeah, good luck, remember what happened in the great hall?" Ron asked.

She ignored him and instead shouted a loud, "Confringo!" Amazingly, the sleigh and reindeer ramming into the wall, exploded. Ron whooped.

"I take it back Hermione." He grinned. Hermione shook her head.

"It's not working, look." She pointed at the chunks of ice, which were fixing themselves back together.

"Great." Harry muttered sarcastically.

She paced around for a while, muttering to herself. "That's it!" She cried. "If it fixes itself, we just need to find something that'll leave nothing behind for it to fix itself with." She whirled on them. "I need you and Harry to put your wands together and shoot out the fastest jet of water out of your wands. They need to combine into one big stream."

"How are we supposed to that?" Harry asked.

"Just use the spell _aqua_ _eructo_ and add as much force into it. It works like the unforgivable curses. The more will you put in it, the more effective it'll be." She explained.

"How is that supposed to help?" Ron grumbled.

"Just do it!" Hermione snapped.

Hesitantly, he looked at Ron and the pointed their wands at the ice sculpture, the tips angled slightly towards each other. "Aqua eructo!" They shouted together, putting as much force as they could into the spell as possible. It felt rather silly at first, but when the huge column of water shot out of their wands as promised, it felt immensely satisfying. It shot at the ice sculpture and Hermione cried out, "Keep it going! Don't stop!" She appeared as close as she dared to the ice sculpture that was fighting the jet of water. Standing next to the liquid column, she pointed her wand at it and shouted.

"Relashio!" Where the water met the icy chest of a reindeer, it was like a giant hole was being drilled into it. Water vapor rose around them and soon the first reindeer had disappeared, leaving another half dozen and Santa in his sleigh. "We need more people, Harry, go round up as many sixth through seventh years as possible, Ron and I'll keep going over here." She commanded. Harry obeyed quickly, running out into the common room where only the first through seventh years remained.

"Quite!" He roared over the din of people talking. It silenced immediately apart from a few whispered and fingers pointing at his scar. "Sixth and seventh years, follow me." He said in a tone that left no room for argument. He heard the sound of shuffling feet and turned around, satisfied. Ginny quickly caught up to him.

"What's wrong? What happened?" She inquired. He glanced at her, glad that nothing had happened to her like it had to them.

"Santa Clause happened." He mumbled, not really knowing how to explained it.

"...I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" She said incredulously.

"You'll see when you get there." He honestly thought that those three girls must be crazy. Santa Clause? What a joke.

"Oh." They arrived at the scene of the crime, where the jet of water was a lot smaller than the two of his and Ron's combined.

"Yeah." He replied.

Hermione noticed them and immediately began ordering them into positions. She ordered all the sixth years and half the seventh years to join Ron in shooting water at the ice sculpture and the rest to join her around her position and fire the same spell continuously into the water. As it turned out, _relashio_, when spelled under water, let out a boiling stream of hot water, he remembered from his fourth task when he had trouble with the grindylows.

"Get to it!" Soon the entire window was filled with the biggest column of water he had ever seen and once the steam cleared, the let the spell fade. The uproar of cheers was deafening. "Ginny!" He heard Hermione shout to his girlfriend. "Once everyone's calmed down, you need to get at least one seventh year in each dorm. Leave this door alone unless you find a way to barricade the window. Thanks!" With that, he felt himself being yanked out of the dorm and through the portrait hole by a certain bushy haired girl.

"Like I said, metal, this one." Ron told him from beside him.

"We can walk by ourselves Hermione." Ron told her. She let them go hastily and they immediately broke off in a sprint. "The teachers have finished the protective charms by now, but they need to get those things out of the school boundaries. There was one they managed to kick out and once it couldn't attack Hogwarts anymore it just disappeared. But the storms just keep on going. They've got the tornadoes out, they pretty much spin my themselves, so they tried to make the border around the school as small as possible. and the rain and snow isn't bothering us any more, neither is the lightning, so we're protected from the storm, it's just those elemental creatures that are the problem now."

"By the way, you were talking about those elemental beasts on the way to Hogwarts, what are they, exactly?" Asked Ron curiously.

"Exactly what they sound like. They are beasts made of their element. They change their form but can never leave the form of their element. There aren't many-it's not like they can reproduce or anything, I'm pretty sure there are only about eight or nine. We're not exactly sure whether all the sub elements have an elemental beast, but we _do_ know that they don't go randomly attacking schools." She frowned. "So I for one don't think these are elemental beasts." They were silent for a moment after her explanation before Ron finally talked.

"Which one did they manage to kick out?"

"There are five, fire and lightning are in the form of dragons, ice was...well, you saw and water is snakes. There are small snakes and then there are huge ones with three heads, some have five, it's quite frightening, but the fifth one, we don't exactly no what form it's in." She frowned.

"Why? A huge beast made of an element can't by hard to find."

"It's air, isn't it." Harry concluded.

"Unfortunately, yes. It seems to have some sort of tail, it'll sweep people off their feet and hit it against the side of the castle. Any way, we managed to kick out the fire one and since we've dealt with the ice, we only have three left." They stepped outside to be greeted by the huge tail of the lightning dragon nearly electrocuting them to death.

"How the bloody hell are we going to get this thing out of here?"

"Professor!" Cried Hermione.

"Miss Granger." Professor McGonagall greeted, casting a shield charm around herself as a tail of water nearly crushed her. "Fire does not seem to be of any use against this water." Harry could see why. The water that made up the snake was spinning around inside itself. Suddenly, he felt something wham into him, knocking the wind out of him and flinging him up. He grabbed onto the thing and immediately began spinning. It was dizzying and it wasn't long before he began feeling the need to puke. This must've been the wind creature that Hermione was talking about. It was then that he realized he was only able to stay on it because the wind was whipping like a tornado, allowing it to have a solid form, much like the water beast. He realised, that if he squinted, he could make out the outline of the tail he was holding onto.

He climbed determinedly up the tail, still spinning around the damn thing. He hoped that they would take this chance to destroy the animal, which he realised looked suspiciously like a tiger or some sort of cat. Soon he was spinning around something much larger. He tried to find something to hang onto, but hey, the thing was made of air. Instead, his arms went through nothing. He wondered why no dust was stuck in it, making visible like a tornado, when he noticed there was something blowing against him. He realised, that the only reason he was able to stay on the thing, was because his arms had penetrated the first layer of the animal, where there was an underlying layer of s spinning current. The first layer was blowing air out of it every where, like there was an air conditioning machine on every inch of it's body. It was quite ingenious.

He could hear people shouting his name. "Harenum." He muttered and sand poured from his wand into the belly of the beast. As more and more sand poured from his wan, he could see the thing growing more visible by the second. He winced as the fast flowing sand whipped against his hands and he tried to pull his sleeves down further. Feeling like Hermione, he cut off the spell and immediately used a new one. "Aguamenti." He murmured. This time, water flowed out of his wand. Despite the creature being made of air, it still behaved animal like and as the water mixed with the ever churning sand, it gradually turned to mud. The air was trapped inside the mud and was weakly spinning.

He felt like he was coming to a stop on an hour long roller coaster that did nothing but spin you around in the same direction. The mud was still spinning, and it felt even more dizzying. He felt disoriented but still managed to shout. "GET IT OUT OF HERE NOW!" He felt himself being yanked out of the mud by invisible hands. He fought to keep his dinner down as he was lain down on the grassy floor. He heard Ron shout, "Wingardium Leviosa!" as he caught his breath and waited for the world to stop spinning.

"Wingardium Leviosa is my new favorite spell when we're fighting giant sized things." He heard Ron say to Hermione and he was briefly reminded of the troll they had faced in third year. He lifted his head up and saw the giant mud tiger loose it's form as Ron set it down outside what he assumed was the barrier. "That was brilliant mate!" Shouted Ron.

As the world righted itself, he tried his best to grin. Professor McGonagall's emerald green robes came into his line of sight and he looked up at her stern face. "I agree with Mr Weasley, ten points to Gryffindor." He caught the briefest of smiles on his face before she turned around. "Miss Granger! If you could repeat Mr Potter's sand spell with me, aim at the water snake, the largest one. On the count of one, two, Harenum." He heard various voices shouting the spell and he noticed one of the smaller snakes above him turning to mud and Neville hovering on a broom beside it. He sat up, noting that everything was where it should be. As the last of the mud piles collapsed outside the barrier, he turned to Ron.

"How're we supposed to destroy that lightning one?" He asked him. He didn't answer, just sighed tiredly. He checked his watch. It was almost midnight and he was tired, the adrenaline having left his body a while ago.

"No bloody idea mate." Was Ron's answer. "It would be nice if we could wingardium leviosa it's bloody ass out of here, but you can't really lift lightning up."

"Unfortunately, Ron's right for a change." Grumbled Hermione from behind them. "You alright there Harry?"

"Yeah, don't think I'll be going on any roller coasters for a while though." He muttered. Ron looked at him curiously. He shook his head. He didn't want to explain anything at the moment and Ron let it drop.

"But," Hermione brightened, "Ron just gave me an idea."

"What? Lifting it? That was a joke." Hermione ignored him.

"Professor McGonagall!" She shouted, running towards the with in emerald. They began conversing before said witch in emerald nodded, waving her wand in a circle above her head. Hermione came running back, stopping to talk to as many people as she could on the way, who nodded and ran off somewhere. "Up you two, we're making a water wall." She grinned.

"She's finally gone off her rocker this one. My girlfriend's a nutter." Ron shook his head but consented.

"You all no the spell?"

"Er-no."

"Aguamuro." She replied shortly. "Stand on the line, one person per dot and wait for Professor McGonagall's signal." She ran off without another word.

True enough, there was a golden line on the grass, spreading around the castle in a large circle, with circles placed along it every thirty feet. Harry stood on the closest one, leaving Ron to scowl at him and find the next on. Just as Ron reached it, red sparks shot into the sky. He noticed staff and students alike shouting the spell Hermione had given them and he was quick to follow. He was lucky, because the second he did, lightning seemed to race across the water. He heard McGonagall's magically amplified voice say, "Force it out of the barrier. One step forward at my word. One." He stepped forward. He could see The giant lightning beast appear at the other end of the circle. "Two!" He watched as it tried to break through the water barrier, only to have it's electricity sucked away by the current. He saw it loose a wing as Mcgonagall shouted another, "One!" and everyone stepped forward once again, the water wall moving with them. The wing's electricity raced around the water fall for a few seconds before disappearing, but amazingly, more electricity just filled up the empty space and the dragon was as whole as it was before. This went on for a while and once the beast tried to fly over the barrier, it was extended into a dome, arching over the top of Hogwarts.

It wasn't until Ron walked face first into the entrance gates that they realised that the creature had been banished, good thing too-they were just inside the barrier. Another step and they would've been caught out in the storm.

He was so tired, he barely remembered walking back to their new common room. He forgot to stare at the flirty mermaid and was asleep before his head touched the pillow, one arm stuck in his robe and the other dangling off the side of the bed.

* * *

**Cleo** **POV**

I couldn't help but feel myself bubble with barely contained excitement. Part of me wanted to show these centaurs who was boss in the world of half animals. I watched, heart thumping loudly as the arrow sped towards Rikki. My eyes instantly snapped to Bella as it appeared a few meters away from her. I heard exclamations and awed gasps as it did so and they only increased once the arrow phased through Bella, not leaving a single scratch. Then it froze in mid air, centimeters away from Emma's outstretched palm. This was my cue. I raised my arm dramatically and maneuvered the arrow through the air and back into Bane's quiver. He flinched back as the arrow headed back to him but refused to back down. Good thing too, if he had moved, I might've accidentally hit him.

"Never! In all my years!" Said Firenze in awe. "You don't even carry those sticks they call wands!"

"Silence!" Shouted Magrorian. He and Bane seemed to have been discussing something while the herd stamped their hooves in appreciation. "We believe your tale and therefore we shall not punish you for trespassing on our territory, but the fact still remains-you cannot stay here."

"What?" Cried Rikki angrily, "Then what was the point of showing you all that? We don't have anywhere to go! This moon pool is more _our_ 'territory' than anyone else!" She punctuated the word 'territory' with air quotes.

Bane sneered. "We arrived here first, _fish_. Our ancestors have long since stayed here. It is tradition that our young be bathed in the pool under the first full moon." Emma's jaw dropped and my eyes bulged. They didn't turn into mermaids? I supposed it made sense, they were already half horse.

"Oh my god." Rikki growled dangerously. "This _place_ is the home of mermaids. Us! Where the hell d you expect us to go? We can't reveal ourselves to those people up at that pig pimple place! Do you know what happened the last time a human saw us?" She growled angrily. "She tried to ship us off to some lab and have us cut up into little fish pieces!"

"Rikki's right! You can't just kick us out of our own home!" Emma shouted furiously.

"This is our territory, not yours!" Magrorian snarled.

"I must agree with Magrorian and Bane." Firenze chipped into the argument. And here I thought he was nice.

"Where will we go?" Demanded Rikki. "We haven't even eaten in nearly two days!"

"You go willingly, or we kick you out." Bane said shortly.

"You know what? You can go fuck yourself." Emma snarled at him. Rikki had a triumphant gleam in her eyes. Emma almost never swore, if she did, she was angry, really angry. And an angry Emma was a force to be reckoned with. Once she set her mind on something, she was as stubborn as Rikki. "You'll have to drag our cold, dead bodies out of here before we leave."

Magrorian's upper lip curled and he bared his teeth. "We have how many compared to you?"

Rikki snorted. "You have bows and arrows. Us?" She raised an eyebrow. "We have the elements on our side." She lifted an arm of fire out of the water for effect. Emma's and Rikki's tails were identical shades of fiery red now. For a second, I could've swore that Rikki's hair was flickering with electricity, but a moment later, it was gone. Geez, was I really that stressed.

I looked around and realised that we had all unconsciously moved forward. Rikki and Emma were side by side in the front center of the moon pool, whereas Bella and I had drifted to the sides to let them handle the on goings.

I watched Magrorian carefully. He seemed so smug, so sure of himself all of a sudden, not backing down at the obvious threat Rikki was posing. His eyes flickered over to Bella and I turned to her. Then I noticed the two centaurs creeping up behind her, rope and spears in hand.

I opened my mouth to warn her, "Bel-" Two pairs of rough hands grabbed my from behind, hoisting my up from the water under my arms. I screamed and thrashed my tail around. I automatically shot my hand out to the water, calling it to me, until I felt my arms being restricted above my head. I used my mind, summoning a wave towards us, but lost concentration when I fully left the water and was thrown over the back of one of my captors.

I phased into my water form, trying to slip down his back, but they seemed to have given it a lot of thought. "Keep going and I break her arms." Laughed Bane. He had Bella on the ground in front of him, face down with held both her arms behind her. He had brought hoof down on her back, keeping her from moving. I smirked as his hoof suddenly sunk through her and the pair of arms he was holding suddenly slipped from his grip. He looked down in shock to find his hoof buried in jelly.

I took the chance to wrap a tentacle of water around the centaur's face causing him to go wild, trying to find an opening for him to breathe. I dropped the tentacle when someone attacked me from behind. A rope wrapped around my waist, pulling me back. I phased back into water and the rope slipped clean through me. I flopped to the ground triumphantly, only to realise that I was in the midst of a dozen centaurs with no way to walk. I cursed the fact that I hadn't thought to get rid of the water when I had phased. I heard a splash and a faint, "Bella!" Thank god, she was back in the moon pool. I struggled to lift the water off myself without using my arms. I didn't want anyone to notice me.

The sound of splashing and a small thud reached my ears. "Emma!" I heard Rikki and Bella shout in unison. My blood ran cold. I decided to wing the stealthy method, which wasn't working too well (I barely felt anything leave my body) and was just lifting my arms, when I heard someone behind me. It turned out to be Bane, who leaned down and held a small, jagged dagger to my throat. I was about to phase into water when I heard him say, "I wouldn't do that if I were you." I stopped and decided to humor him.

"Oh yeah? Guy holding a knife to my throat, now why wouldn't I want to turn into something he can't kill?" I asked sarcastically, turning to him. He smirked at me before he grabbed my wrists in one smooth motion and dragged me up. It hurt like hell, let me tell you that. He wasn't exactly gentle. Being held by your wrists only with no ground to hold you up on isn't very pleasant. His firm grip felt like it would snap my delicate wrists as he held my high above his head effortlessly. It was like a was a fish being hung up to dry. He had no problem lifting me up to the other centaur's height, which I hadn't noticed until then, that it was about ten centimeters taller than my length when I was a mermaid. That was saying a lot, seeing as my tail added an extra round about sixty centimeters to my height.

"That's why." He smirked. I could just hear it in his voice. I looked over the heads of the various centaurs and spotted a motionless Emma slung over the shoulder of a grinning Magrorian. Horror washed through me.

"What did you do?" I snarled at him, trying to twist around. I tried to kick my tail against him only to see that another centaur had looped a length of rope around the base, preventing me from moving. I resisted the urge to phase into water as I glared at Magrorian, who was smirking and had lifted Emma's head up to hold a jagged dagger to her throat. Bane walked forward and I could feel my body swaying with each step he took. My tail was flashing angrily between orange and black as I tried to think of a way our of this checkmate.

As Bane strode towards Magrorian, I felt humiliation wash through me. It was like I was a prize he was parading around. I felt naked under their gazes and I struggled to keep my head held high.

"-ing son of a bitch!" I heard Rikki hiss at Magrorian as we arrived beside him. I watched Rikki and this time I was sure her head had turned to lightning.

"Rikki!"

"What?"

"Your hair!" Her moment of confusion seemed to shut off the electricity. She turned to grumble at me, her previous anger returning, but I shook my head and she whipped back around in time to catch sight of a few strands of electrified hair. The centaurs for now seemed to be ignoring us, tending to some of their own. I glanced at them and saw that two had arms encased in ice, their shoulders turning a bit blue where it ended. I smirked as I realised that they had been the unwitting two who had attacked Emma.

Rikki shut off the electricity a split second before Bane turned around, my body swaying with the momentum. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at me then at Rikki and Bella before turning back around.

Rikki waited a few seconds to see if he would turn back around, but he didn't, so she furrowed her eyebrows together and soon, her whole body erupted in blue-white cackling bolts. Bella shied away and yelped rather loudly. Rikki hastily returned to normal, glaring at Magrorian and Bane. Seeing this, simply glared at the two as if saying, _shutup_ before turning to talk about their oh so important...whatever they were talking about.

Bane seemed to finally grow tired of holding me up like a freshly caught giant salmon. He threw me over his horse back and the air whooshed out of me. My chest heaved for a while, trying to get more air into my system, but it soon became apparent that my breaths would have to be reduced to small, shallow pants.

Rikki wasn't too good at controlling her lightning yet. Usually the most she did, was direct it at a certain spot on the ground, so it didn't work out too well when she turned into electricity and couldn't hold back the currents as well as she would like. Bella received quite a few shocks thanks to that, but soon Rikki was able to push out a rod of electricity from her palm and hold it like a one handed sword. The absence of grumbles and wincing from Bella meant that she had successfully managed to keep the electricity from killing Bella. It was a good thing that the moon pool here didn't seem to have any salt in it. It was pure water, no extra ions, so the electricity wasn't conducted too well, sparing Bella from being a cooked fish.

Rikki's smirk looked like it was about to split her face until Magrorian turned around and began speaking. "We can negotiate the terms of you leaving our territory under these circumstances. You will not show any form of power, or I slit her throat." He threatened. I hated the feeling of dirt sticking to my tail as it dragged along the ground as Bane turned around the face Bella and Rikki.

I turned my head to watch and hissed when he pulled Emma's head back further and dug the knife threateningly against her throat once more. Rikki gave him an 'I'll kill you for this' look but kept quite.

"Good." He said, satisfied. Bella looked extremely nervous and worried. The air around me suddenly felt dry and I could feel myself drying off faster than I should've been.

"Cut it out Rikki!" I hissed. She looked at me confusedly, noticing the change in the air.

"It's not me." She hissed back.

"Silence!" Snapped Magrorian. "I said no form of power is to be shown."

"I can't control it." Mumbled Bella. "This is new, I've never done it before." Firenze stepped forward.

"Perhaps, Magrorian, you should put the unconscious girl back in the water, we don't want her drying out and dying." He told him.

Magrorian grunted and lowered Emma into the pool, but kneeled down beside her to keep her head up and the knife against her throat. Bane's lip curled.

"I don't think I'll let this one down. The quicker we get this over with, the better, besides, she can keep herself from drying out." He sneered. "Oh wait! We said no powers are to be shown." He continued mockingly. "Guess you better stop using your 'abilities', or two of you will be dead." It was quite daunting, but hey, the threat of being cutup and dissected was a lot scarier than just dying on the spot.

"Bella! Cut it out! I'm drying too fast!" I whimpered. No powers. I couldn't keep my self as a mermaid and I blushed as I remembered my state of dress. Fate seemed to want to be even crueler, because Bane decided that he would hold me out for display as I dried out. ("You can watch your friend dry out in front of you.") Bella's eyes furrowed and she seemed to be concentrating hard for a moment when I felt the air return to it's former humidity. Seemed like we had all gained new powers. Rikki was turning into lightning/electricity and Bella was the ability to control humidity. I wondered what Emma and mine would be.

I prayed that Bane would put me back on his back soon. The damage was done, my hair was dry already and I was pretty sure that the only reason I was still a mermaid was because water was probably stuck in between my scales or something. I was going to dry sooner or later. This was probably the first time I wished that I would dry slower.

"That's better." Magrorian bared his teeth in an animalistic grin. "Now we can talk." I drowned out their conversation, trying to figure out how to get myself out of this. I hoped that maybe it wouldn't be a big deal if I was half naked to them, but as I looked around, I noticed that all the women were wearing some form of covering over their chests. Be it animal fur or a leathery hide, something was covering their assets.

"Shit." I muttered as I was water for a split second before I felt cold wind against my chest. I felt my face heat up as all eyes turned to me and gasps filled the clearing.

"Well, well, well." I heard Bane. He poked my legs like he thought it was an illusion. "Seems you haven't told us everything."

Rikki scoffed, trying to bring the attention away from me. It worked on Bane at least. "We mentioned a sleep over. I'm pretty sure you know what a house is and that it requires land?" It'd be kinda hard to build something underwater without everything collapsing first.

I saw some of the younger and less hardy females glaring at me as many of the males swung their heads around to stare openly at me. Then the jeering began.

"Who knew-"

"-Mermaids with assets-"

"-On show like a-"

My face burned and I felt tears stinging at the corner of my eyes. I just wanted to disappear. I wanted to fade into nothing and make sure no one would ever see me again.

Then I was floating. My hands were free and no one was looking at me anymore. I realised that Bane was grasping at thin air and I was somewhere above him. I looked around confusedly, what happened? I looked at my hands, only to see nothing. I tried to move back to Rikki and Bella in the moon pool, resulting in nothing but a soft breeze whipping over the heads of the centaurs. What was going on?

Then it hit me. New powers. Seemed my affinity for wind grew, just like it did with water, in the last full moon. Maybe the two full moons so close together affected us so we received new powers. Wow. Now we just had to figure out what Emma's was.

"Come out!" The clearing silenced immediately. Magrorian was shouting now, his knife digging deeper into Emma's neck. My eyes narrowed. Maybe I could do something about this. I imagined myself as the wind, blowing gently down towards Bella. I whispered in her ear but it came out as nothing but the breeze. I shouted and she jumped before whispering to Rikki.

"Did you hear that?" She asked her. Seemed I was more of the wind than I thought.

"Hear what?"

"Bella!" I shouted again. On the outside, I only heard the smallest of sounds, it was like a million people were whispering, "Bella."

"It's me! Cleo!" I shouted. "Be quiet. As soon as Magrorian lets go of Emma, put up a shield around the moon pool. Extend it as far as you can around us. Make it as thick as possible." She didn't seem to get all of it but seemed to understand enough and nodded slightly. I floated up behind her and Rikki.

I tried to imagine myself slamming into Magrorian's chest and propelled myself forward, trying to get used to the feeling of being weightless in air. In water, there was at least some form of gravity, even if it was minimal.

He cried out as I slammed into him in the form of a giant gust of wind. Emma slid into the moon pool and Rikki, while bewildered, rushed forward to support her. I dropped into the moon pool just as a thick, almost translucent shield closed over the moon pool in the shape of a dome. I heard the sound of hooves pounding against the barrier accompanied by shouts of rage. Thankfully, Bella's crystalline jelly substance was the toughest thing I had ever seen and held well against the onslaught.

"Cleo!" Rikki shouted, surprised, "How the hell did you do that?"

I grinned, relived to be out of danger for now. "Same as your lightning."

"I get it!" She grinned. "I have lightning, so you get wind."

"Guys! Now's not the time! We need to somehow get out of here or at least calm these centaurs down." Bella reprimanded us.

"You go out there and talk to them then." Rikki grumbled at her.

"I would but I have no idea what to say! We can't just leave here."

"Bargain with them or something, say something like, we'll make a border or something and until we figure something out, we won't go past the border."

Bella's eyes lit up. "Rikki, your a genius!" She swam towards the edge of the moon pool before waving her hand in the direction of the ceiling. "You two can watch from up there." Then there was a platform rising up from beneath us. It floated up to the ceiling before stopping and I noticed that there were small holes at the top.

Rikki became fire as I became water and we squeezed ourselves through the tiny holes. We popped up just as Bella emerged from the dome in her crystallized jelly form. An onslaught of attacks immediately surrounded Bella, who stood there patiently.

"It's not going to work." She called out. She waited a few moments before the attacks ceased slowly to a halt.

"What do you want." Growled Bane.

"What's with these people and growling at us." Rikki muttered.

"We want to negotiate." Bane was about to retaliate when Firenze cut in.

"We simply want you to leave our territory, this is part of it."

"I know." Bella replied, "But this pool here," She gestured, "Is a safe haven for mermaids like us. You see, we mermaids actually live with humans. Our families are human and we live in secret. Everywhere in the world, there is a moon pool where we can find safe havens for ourselves."

Firenze raised a white eyebrow. "Go on."

"We don't want to stay here, but we can't figure out what to do. We're hungry and tired and just want a moments peace to think about what we're going to do." Firenze seemed to be contemplating this and Bella hastily continued. "We simply ask, that we perhaps, create a boundary for the time being until we can figure out a way home."

"A boundary?" Firenze asked and I noted that people were listening now, weapons hanging limply by their sides. Bella seemed to notice as well because she nodded eagerly.

"Here." The dome around the moon pool dissipated and she instead, used her crystallized jelly to draw a large circle around the moon pool. Centaurs stepped back as she walked towards them-about ten meters away from the moon pool, making the wide circle about thirty meters in diameter. The centaurs were now lining the outside of the circle and she stepped back hopefully.

"Those are...acceptable terms for now, but this territory is quite large..." Firenze stated at last. "Especially since you will be staying only in this...moon pool you call it."

Bella laughed. "No, we can't really live in the water, we don't have gills, see? We can just hold our breath for long periods of time. It used to be a measly fifteen minutes, but the girls over there can now go up to almost an hour. Me? About two." She smirked. "Besides, we're only half fish, so while we can withstand freezing temperatures, that doesn't mean it isn't uncomfortable, besides, we humans like the warmth when it's dark, so, we were thinking,"

"No we weren't." Rikki whispered again, "She better not stuff this up."

"We would stay only inside this border for the time being. We'll do our own thing and you guys can just ignore us."

Firenze was deep in thought before he turned around and began a deep discussion with Ronan, Bane and Magrorian. It went on for a while and Bane and Magrorian seemed to be too against it for me to stay still and resist fidgeting. I could feel the wind and water stirring restlessly and I tried to reign in my emotions.

After what seemed like an eternity, Ronan turned around. "We agree to your terms on the condition that you do not stay here longer than a month and leave our territory by that deadline."

"Deal!" Squealed Bella, looking as though she could hug him. "Thank you so much!" The platform suddenly dropped out from under us and I squealed as the water met my body with a splash.

Rikki recovered the fastest and scrambled out of the moon pool, drying her self along the way from top to bottom. "I don't suppose something to eat would be too much to ask for?" She asked hopefully. "We haven't eaten in over a day." Magrorian cast her a scrutinizing look.

"You don't have too cook it or anything, just some raw meat or fruits or something, since we can't leave this border." She added quickly. Firenze seemed to be in a good mood after the negotiation and laughed serenely.

"I suppose that is reasonable." He agreed. He looked at Bane he begrudgingly called out an indistinguishable word. Bella and Rikki laughed happily. Bella was bouncing on her toes and Rikki looked like she could kiss Firenze at that moment. Then I noticed something. Emma was gone.

"Guys!" I shouted, "Where's Emma?" I looked around in panic as they turned around. Emma couldn't hold her breath unconsciously, she could've drowned. Now that would be the stupidest thing I had ever seen.

"Crap! I forgot all about her!" Cried Rikki. "Some friend I am."

I dived down into the moon pool, hearing a splash as Rikki followed. Bella waited at the side anxiously, ready to pull her up and perform CPR if necessary, the front of her face being the only thing that wasn't jelly.

I spotted Emma down on the sand and I sped forward with Rikki, grabbing an arm and pulling her back to the surface. We surfaced and Bella looked at Emma in worry when she gasped.

"What?" I asked. Bella pointed at Emma's neck.

"She has gills!"

"Huh?" I uttered, feeling stupid. I looked at her neck and sure enough there were three slits opening and closing. I quickly closed them, hoping they would fade back into her skin if they didn't open up after a while. I noticed Rikki doing the same, still looking disbelieving.

"I think I figured out what Emma's power is." She smiled. I agreed. Who would've thought?

I slowly took my hand off her neck and was relieved to find her skin was smooth once more. Emma woke with a start.

"Huh? Whaddida miss?" She slurred.

"Oh nothing much, only the fact that you got gills." Bella giggled in relief, as Emma's eyes widened. Two centaurs marched forward with a long, thin tree branch hoisted on their shoulders. Tied onto the tree branch, was a chicken. No, there were about a dozen chickens and Rikki gaped in awe. I swear I could see the drool.

"Wait, or those chickens? Or some weird meat that's half chicken half snake?" I asked cautiously. I refused to eat some half animal.

Ronan laughed heartily and I was surprised that they were suddenly so friendly. "Do not worry young ones, they are legitimate chickens, gutted and plucked all this morning. Even a place such as this has ordinary animals." I sighed in relief and noticed the sun.

"It's evening already!" I exclaimed in shock. Geez, how long had we been here for?

Bella molded what looked like two 'y's with really long stems out of the water. She lifted them and dug them into the grass. "Could you put those there?" She asked. The branch with the chicken was placed on in between the two 'y's with some extra branch hanging over the sides. A large bowl was placed beside it on the grass and as I peared over the edge, I saw an assortment of fruits and vegetables in it.

"Thanks a bunch." Rikki smiled.

"Remember to keep your word." replied Bane shortly before stalking off after his kin.

Bella was about to swim after Rikki and Emma to the shoreline when I stopped her. "I want my shirt back." I told her. She laughed.

* * *

**AN: Ok, I know some of this chapter was a bit perverted but it's all over now. I just really needed an excuse to show how Cleo and Emma found out about their new abilities!**

**Also, I was wondering if you guys mind that Harry and Draco won't be full on enemies, maybe coming into a bit over civil terms through out the story? Nt buddy buddy or anything, but just as something extra for you draco fans out there. I'm a fan myself, especially of Hermione/Draco, but I asked about pairing and you all said cannon, so no biggie.**

**I love you all for reading!**


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: Ok, on request of MermaidWant2Be, I'm going to put a list of their powers that I've added to the girls. Don't bother with this if you already know. Usually I'd send it with a PM but she doesn't have an account so just bare with me.**

**Cleo:**

**The ability to turn parts of herself or all of herself into water. She can also turn other things into water, but only if it doesn't have a heart beat.**

**The ability to reduce water. (Before she was only able to make more water or control it)**

**Telekinesis. (The ability to move anything physical with your mind)**

**The ability to enchant someone, typically men, with a song. _(I revealed in one of the recent chapters that she either starts acting drunk and high or becomes a blood lusting psycho mermaid that wants to eat human flesh-like a real siren when she uses this power.)_  
**

**Rikki had gained the following:**

**The ability to turn parts of herself or all of her self into fire. She can also turn other things into fire, but only if it doesn't have a heart beat.**

**The ability to actually control fire. (formerly, she could only set fire to things, now she can make shapes in mid-air and things like that)**

**The ability to make something disappear and reappear somewhere else.**

**The ability to send out an invisible 'jab'. (like something that forces you back but you can't see it)**

**Emma had gained the following:**

**The ability to change parts of herself or all of herself into ice. She can also turn other things into ice, but only if it doesn't have a heart beat.**

**The ability to actually control ice and cool down water slowly. (formerly, she could only freeze things, now she can move the ice around mid-air, chip bits off the ice, things like that)**

**The ability to freeze something where it is but not move it.**

**The ability to send out an invisible force field.**

**Bella had gained the following:**

**Te ability to change parts of herself or all of herself into jelly (Both the hardened form and the jelly-jelly form). She can also turn other things into jelly, but only if it doesn't have a heart beat.**

**The ability to actually control jelly. (formerly, she could only turn things into jelly, now she can make shapes in mid-air and things like that)**

**The ability to phase things through things. (that means to go through things, like walls)**

**The ability to slow something down to half it's current moving speed.**

_**Here are the powers I added in the last chapter as a result of being in the moon pool during two full moons so close together:**_

_**Cleo: The ability to turn (phase) into air as well as produce it, similar to her water power.**_

_**Rikki: **__**The ability to turn (phase) into lightening as well as produce it, similar to her fire power.**_

_**Emma: When she breathes in water, gills open up on her neck automatically-conscious or unconscious.**_

_**Bella: The ability to control humidity in the air around her.**_

* * *

**Harry POV  
**

He woke up earlier than he would've liked, despite the face that he had slept so late. His mind was sluggish and he glanced at the watch, squinting through the blurry haze of his eyes. He could make out a six and two zeroes. He groaned and rolled over, intending to get more shut-eye, only to be jolted awake by the sensation of falling and landing on cold, hard floor.

"Ow!" He hissed, fully awake now. He heard Ron snort in his sleep and roll over, not even near the edge of his bed. He heard a snigger and noticed Malfoy holding a glass bottle of what looked like a branded mouth washing potion. He was thankful for the fact that the school provided a standard bottle and seemed to be replaced by the house elves once a student ran out.

Wizards didn't brush their teeth. Good thing too. The one thing that Harry had funnily enough forgotten, was his toothbrush. He didn't realize it in his first year until he had gone to brush his teeth on his first night at Hogwarts. There, in the bathroom on the counter top, had been four bottles of clear liquid. He had been quite confused until Ron walked in. He had gone on about how glad he was that Hogwarts provided mouth washing potion. ("It makes sense I s'pose. The muggle-borns wouldn't have any. Besides, I don't think mum could afford to buy all of us a year's worth of mouth washing potion.") He had watched as Ron chose the yellow bottle and tipped a mouthful into his mouth, rinsing it around before spitting it back out. Harry had selected the green bottle and found that it was the weirdest sensation he had ever felt. The taste was minty like tooth paste, but it was as though various people were brushing your teeth at the same time. Even though his mouth was closed, he could feel the invisible brushes scrubbing in between his teeth.

As soon as he spat it out, he had felt as though he hadn't brushed his teeth until then. He wondered how witches and wizards still got yellow teeth with a potion like this in their possession.

"I should've brought a camera with me." He snickered as he walked past his bed.

"Haha." He grumbled, still too sluggish to think of a come back. He noticed that Malfoy seemed to have lost that particularly malicious glint in his eye whenever he spoke with him. He felt sorry for Malfoy when he remembered that his father had been administered the Dementor's Kiss. While the purebloods had all lost their good standings within the wizarding society, they hadn't lost a knut of their wealth and Malfoy was currently living with his mother, Narcissa, in the Malfoy estate.

Deciding that he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep after that, he felt around for his glasses. He quickly dressed in a set of his school robes before walking slowly down to the common room, wondering if any one else was awake.

He wasn't sure whether or not to be surprised when he spotted Hermione reading in one of the white arm chairs in front of the fire.

"Morning." He sleepily called down to her.

"Harry." She greeted. He sat down in the arm chair opposite to her when he caught sight of the title of the book she was holding: _The Elemental Beasts_

"You already went to the library?" He asked incredulously.

"Hush Harry, listen to this." She cleared her throat. " The last sighting of an Elemental Beast since 1992, was in 1853. As far as history has recorded, there have only been seven sightings of these mysterious creatures. While they seem to take any form they please, there seem to only be one of each element. There have been two sightings of the fire beast, two of the water beast and one of the earth beast. They are gentle creatures, not taking pleasure in anything in particular. Wizards studying the elemental beasts theorize that each element has an elemental beast, even going far enough to include sub elements, such ice and wood."

"So what does this have to do with us?" Asked Harry.

"This means I was right! Elemental Beasts are gentle, they don't attack randomly, even fire, which was seen _twice_. _I _think, those beasts we encountered weren't elemental beasts. They might've been the result of an elemental sprite."

"A what?" He asked. All this elemental business was doing his head in.

"Here." She flipped over about a hundred pages. "Elemental sprites, such as dryads and water sprites are often confused with elemental beasts, since they too are an element. Dryads are wood sprites and are bonded to a tree, them being the soul of the tree, the only type of soul with a physical form. Dryads can take the form of a maiden when leaving their trees; however, since they are only the soul of the tree, if the tree dies, so does the dryad. Water sprites are sometimes referred to as Nyads or Water Nymphs in Greek mythology and often live in groups in rivers and are rarely seen in large masses of water like the ocean. Unlike dryads, however, water sprites cannot take the form of a maiden or any sort of human. They may control the water in their river just as the dryads and their trees, but do not take the appearance of a human. They are made purely of water and spirit, they are not to be confused with creatures such as mermaids."

"So, your saying that whatever they call a fire sprite, lightning sprite, air sprite, water sprite and ice sprite banded together and attacked Hogwarts last night?"

"Sort of, that's what's got me stumped; I was so sure that that ice sculpture was that ice girl's and that ice girl and all her friends were elemental sprites. Only problem is, it says here, that ice sprites don't exist since ice is a sub-element created by putting wind and water together. I figured as much but I had to check anyway." She looked completely hopeless. "Then I thought, maybe the brunette was a water sprite, but then I realised she had a human form. Then I thought that she might be half human but since water sprites have no real human form and are only ever females, they can't reproduce like dryads to form half human half sprites. Mind you, it's been over two centuries since that last happened. Heaps of the sprites died because they decided they didn't want to be around wizards and their wars, so they moved to the muggle world where at the time, people weren't cutting down trees every day. But when they did, there wasn't much they could do about it, it takes a lot of time for a dryad to move her tree."

Hermione was giving him a bit too much information and he tried to process her rapid talking while figuring out where she was going with this. "So basically, your saying that you have no idea what those girls are because there is no record whatsoever of anything remotely similar to them in the whole of Hogwarts library?"

"Hogwarts has the largest collection of wizarding books in the whole of the wizarding world." She cried out. "There was a whole shelf on elemental beasts!" She took out her book bag and spilled out a dozen books. "I've skimmed through all of them and _nothing_ is even remotely similar to what they were."

"Were you up all night reading?" He spluttered.

"It doesn't matter, I used a potion I brewed over the summer. Five minutes sleep restores your body and mind functioning to as if you had three hours. I just drank it and set my wand to emit chirping sounds in twenty minutes."

"And you never thought to drink a potion like that all these years in Hogwarts when you were so busy studying you were barely awake for lessons?"

"I dealt with it fine, besides, I only recently discovered it and it's not good for long term use, becomes addicting and your body starts to build up an immune system to it. You didn't think such a potion wouldn't have a downfall did you?" At that moment, a circular section in the wall opened up and Professor McGonagall strode in. He vaguely remembered as the entrance to the common room.

She was carrying two scrolls and upon entering, pinned one up on the notice board. She nodded to them. "Mr Potter, Ms Granger."

"Good morning Professor." Despite her being Headmistress, he didn't think he could ever call her anything but professor. She didn't seem to mind though.

"All classes have been canceled for today. We need to have repairs to the school done and I suspect many students did not sleep well. Poppy insisted on keeping all the students who were injured over night and the hospital wing is over crowded."

Hermione groaned. "So much for first day back to school. Wait Professor, will you still be teaching transfiguration?" She asked.

A small smile curved at McGonagall's lips. "Indeed I will. Since the war is over, there is not much for me to do at the moment but repair and manage the school, unlike Albus, who had to constantly keep up with the politics going on around the ministry. I'm not sure I'm willing to part with my job yet, no I think not." Hermione immediately brightened at this.

"I'll see you in class tomorrow then." She chirped was about to leave when something suddenly struck Harry.

"Sorry to hold you back again, Professor, I'm sure you need to hang that other notice in Gryffindor tower, but what did the mermaid say happened to her?" Hermione listened eagerly, hoping for an answer. McGonagall, on the other hand frowned.

"It seems you were right when you told us the trio had escaped into the lake, only said that they invaded their territory-I'm sure it was an accident-so she attacked them. The only problem was, no human trespassed. What she attacked, were mermaids but she said they were not mers. They had gleaming tails of gold that changed colours and they were completely human from the waist up."

"It sounds like a mermaid from muggle stories." Hermione muttered. Harry couldn't help but agree.

"She also said they attacked with no weapons. But what confuses me, is the fact that she had never seen anything like it before. She asked if it was one of ours and of course I denied it, but she seemed suspicious after that and wouldn't say another word."

"So they're mermaids?" Asked Hermione. "That doesn't make sense. There has been no account for mermaids ever being anything but fierce and crude. They girls we saw were quite beautiful." She admitted. "Not to mention, no creature that is not an elemental creature can control an element. Mermaids are certainly not elemental creatures."

"I agree with you Miss Granger. I thought perhaps they had found a way to become only half animagus and because of this, their potion might've caused their tails to switch colours, but as I'm sure you know, there is a limit to what we wizards can do. We cannot turn into elements. Even our spells can only produce elements and some are even hard to control as I'm sure you remember with the fiendfyre."

Hermione nodded. "Thank you professor."

"Good day." She left and they sat in a comfortable silence.

"Hey, Hermione," He began.

"Hmm?" She hummed.

"The sixth floor. I don't really remember coming up here much but I swear there weren't crystals everywhere." She laughed.

"Ginny told me about that. Apparently she was up here when one of the death eaters came up here. He was either obsessed with the crystals or he spent so much time on that one spell he couldn't do any other. I have to say, it was quite an ingenious spell." Harry raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue. "It was a curse."

"A curse that curses things not humans?"

She huffed crossly. "A curse can curse anything. I can't believe you scored higher than me in defense against the dark arts." He rolled his eyes at this. The only reason he got an 'O' was because he could perform a patronus charm. "Anyway, this curse was a crystallizing curse. It literally crystallizes everything it touches. This death eater was crystallising people, that's why there were so many reports in the daily prophet on missing bodies and people. He had crystallised them then smashed through the poor things. You see, the curse was a curse for a reason. The curse was designed to keep it so you could keep moving, but imagine trying to run like that. So basically, he just blasted through the people he had crystallised."

"That is sick." Harry muttered. "I don't understand how people can get so sadistic."

Hermione nodded, "Ginny was the one that took him down. She got me a belated birthday present over the Summer-a pensieve and she put her memory of that scene in it. It was quite spectacular. She got into close quarters with the man and just as he shot the spell at her, she slipped to the side, grabbed his wrist and turned the spell on him, crystallising his wand as well. Then she smashed him into a million pieces."

"My sister did what?" Asked Ron at the top of the staircase. "I don't think I even need to warn Harry about not hurting her." He mumbled. His eyes went to the pile of scattered books dumped unceremoniously on the crystal table. "Seriously Hermione? You've already been to the library?"

"What about the mermaid? I don't think I've seen any sort of mermaid anywhere except the prefect's bathroom." Hermione frowned.

"The mermaid's always been there, though it seems that this common room was built during the repairing of Hogwarts. As for it moving, the crystallising curse brought it to life after prettying it up. Since the curse was designed solely to crystallise and keep the victim moving, it seems to have brought life to the statue."

"What are they going to do with this room after this year?" Ron asked. "It'll be like an empty classroom."

Hermione's eyes took on a mischievous glint. "Professor McGonagall hasn't said anything about it yet and she told me something, perhaps I shouldn't say..." She giggled as Ron leaned forward in anticipation. "All students from this year's second year to seventh years have to stay for an extra year at Hogwarts!" She let out excitedly. "This'll be the common room for the next seven years worth of eight years."

Ron's eyes widened. "You're kidding me! So, we're not the only ones!"

Hermione giggled. "McGonagall hasn't told anyone yet, she's going to make an announcement at the end of the year. See, since no one had a proper education last year because of Voldemort, " Ron didn't even flinch at the name, "The ministry of magic also decided that the people missed out a year, so they'll all be doing what they should've done last year."

Ron snickered. "I'm rubbing this in Ginny's face for the whole of Summer break."

"But wouldn't McGonagall and some of the staff have had taught them properly? What if some students, especially Ravenclaw, figure out that they're redoing a year?" He asked.

"No, since they Carrows were so sadistic, at least half the class every lesson was missing. Not to mention most of the students were hiding out in the room of requirement."

Ron suddenly jumped up. "Blimey! It's eight o'clock, breakfast has started. We need to eat before class starts."

"Class has been canceled for today." Hermione grumbled.

Ron whooped loudly and an expensive looking leather shoe promptly hit him in the back of the head, followed by a "Shut up Weasley!"

Three guesses who.

* * *

**Cleo POV**

We had strung the curtain of 'vines' to the sides of the cave like entrance. We held them in place with the help of Bella's crystallised jelly in the form of two brackets placed on the edge of the rock and wrapped around the ropes of leaves. She had then proceeded to turn her platform creation back into water and throw my precious garment onto the shoreline which was quickly followed by hers.

After I'd dried off and jammed the silky thing over my head, I was determined to never part with it again.

We were all standing on the shore line of the moon pool, wondering what to do with the food. "How are we going to cook the chicken?" I asked. "Boiled? Or should we try a 'Rikki special'?"

"I vote Rikki special." Smirked Rikki. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea.

"I have a better idea. I've always wanted to try it out but I never was a camping type girl." Said Emma.

"What about that time we went with my family?" I asked.

"I was a bit preoccupied at the time." She reminded me. Right. Charlotte and the full moon. "Anyway, we need wood and rocks. A lot of rocks." We stared at her. "What are you waiting for Cleo?"

"What?"

"We can't leave this border." She grumbled. Right. "By the way Bella, how heat proof is your hardened jelly?"

"Never actually tried it. Should be pretty heat resistant, why?" She asked.

"Later." Emma replied. I scanned the forest and decided to just bring down the branch I had flown into the trees for wood. It landed outside the border with the sound of a few branches snapping.

"How the hell am I supposed to find rocks?" I asked Emma exasperatedly.

"Just look for a really big one then smash it into smaller rocks and bring it over here." Helpful.

I peered around the edge of the cave mouth and spotted a large boulder just behind the tree line. I lifted my hand and levitated the large boulder, summoning it to me. It zoomed over to us and as it arrived I closed my fist and it exploded into jagged fist sized rocks. I summoned a bit of wind to blow away some of the dust and lay the pile of stone on the grass outside the border; I didn't want to take up any of the space we had.

Emma appeared satisfied and began ordering us like a chef would to his apprentices. "Bella, make a large pot and something to hold it over the fire with. Rikki, start the fire, make it big, about a meter wide and toss fifty or so of those rocks in there. Cleo, wash the chicken and fill the pot with water, not from the moon pool."

"Yes chef." Rikki jeered, saluting and scampering off to the large tree branch.

Emma rolled her eyes. "Wait Cleo, before you do that, could you suck all the water from that tree, other it'll smoke too much when we're burning it, not to mention it won't light as easily as I would like."

"Sure." I answered. I felt around the tree for any water and pulled the liquid out. I turned away as Rikki shot me a look of thanks as she snapped off a thicker branch she had been struggling with previously. I surrounded one of the chickens with water and yanked at it, snapping the rope it was tied with. I turned the inside of the sphere of water into a whirlpool, making sure the chicken stayed still. I was pretty sure it was clean. Bella's pot was ready and I pushed out a floating river. I landed in her pot and she looked up. She held the pot up under the end of the river, amusement dancing in her eyes. The wonders of mermaid magic.

I looked over at Rikki just as she set fire to a large pile of branches. I decided to help out and I levitated a pile of stones into the fire. "You do know I could've just heated them by myself right?" She asked Emma.

"It's funner this way." Emma replied, staring into the fire. I followed her line of sight and watched as the rocks slowly turned from orange to a bright, cherry red.

"Shouldn't we take them out now?" I asked.

"No, they have to turn white, especially since we want it to cook fast." At this point I was slightly scared they would explode.

"Shouldn't we put vegetables with it, I mean plain chicken's pretty boring." Bella suggested.

"Oh! I forgot!" Emma explained, slapping a hand to her forehead. I smiled and wandering off to choose a selection of vegetables. I kneeled down near the wooden bowl and peered inside. There were an assortment of herbs and I could recognize rosemary, parsley, mint and thyme. There were a few unknown herbs but I figured I'd ask Emma later. I could see two limes and a lemon as well as a small pile of apples and two cloves of garlic. There were also half a dozen potatoes, brown onions and carrots, accompanied by a few tomatoes. At first I thought that apples were the only fruits they had given us, but under the unruly leaves of a hastily thrown in whole lettuce, I could see a dozen strawberries and a bunch of grapes. There was also a large pile of oranges and a bunch of bananas.

"Emma!" I yelled. We were going to need a fridge, maybe even a freezer. I never really realized how big the bowl was until I was close up. The whole thing looked to be about a meter across.

"What?" She asked, coming to a stop beside me.

"Think you can make a freezer?" I asked.

"Bella!" She yelled.

"What?" She yelled back.

"We need your help!"

I heard Rikki say something about feeling left out and smirked. "Need my help with what?" She asked.

"Can you make the shape of a fridge. A big one. No fruit box just shelves."

She nodded in understanding. I lifted my hand and water flowed out of my palm. I shaped a large rectangle box a head taller than me with shelves in the interior. I added hinges with empty holes and purposely left out a door. Bella hardened it, palm out. I shaped a door with fitting the hinges and fitted it into the fridge. That was hardened too.

"Thanks." Emma told her. She nodded before heading back to the campfire. Emma and I sorted through the produce, placing fruits on one shelf, chicken on another. "I wonder how they grow all this, that forest looks pretty dark." She pondered aloud. I nodded my head and pointed to a few herbs, asking what they were. Emma was only able to identify three as lemon grass, sage and basil. There were bound to be some herbs we didn't know she had concluded.

After we had sorted the produce, we agreed that fruits were only to be eaten in the mornings for breakfast. If there was any left over chicken from the night before, that too. I was glad we had Emma with us, I honestly didn't think we would've survived as well as we did without her.

I selected a few sprigs of rosemary, thyme and a lime. held the lime out to Emma who promptly created a sharpened blade of ice, slicing the green fruit in half easily. I placed on half back to its place in the not-so-cold fridge besides the other lime and lemon. Next, I grabbed a dozen lettuce leaves followed by a potato and a carrot. Emma held her palm out and froze the rest of the produce, layering everything with a thin sheet of frosty ice. I closed the door to the fridge and Emma coated the whole thing in ice.

I raised an eyebrow at her questioningly. "We don't know what kind of animals are here. The scent of food will attract any animal, I''m going to ask Rikki to light the border of our 'territory' with fire for extra measure." Was her answer to my silent question as we walked back to the campfire, the fridge bobbing along behind Emma. "Bella, could make a mini platform under the moon pool roof, right at the very back? We need to put the fridge there." Emma gestured to the giant block of ice behind her.

"Why?"

"Animals might come. We also don't want certain people to be pigging out on necessities." She said pointedly. Rikki huffed.

Soon the fridge had landed somewhere on the water in the moon pool and I was washing the herbs and veggies in a sphere of floating water.

"I don't want vegetables." Rikki whined. Emma glared.

"I'm going to force feed you if you don't eat willingly. We're only cooking two chickens per day, baked vegetables are quite filling."

"What about breakfast!" Cried Rikki indignantly.

"Fruits and any leftovers from the night before."

Rikki grumbled but consented, seeming to understand the situation. "I don't think I've actually ever gone a day without a fruit juice since I got to the Gold Coast." She said.

"Yeah, me too." Bella said after a moment's thought. I suddenly felt homesick as I dissipated the water into nothing, leaving the vegetables floating in mid air.

I sat down and we sat in a comfortable silence. "The rocks are almost ready, look." Emma pointed to the fire and sure enough, a pile of white stones were shining brightly back at us. "Shape this, Bella." Ice appeared out of thin air and morphed into the shape of a large, half a hollow oval. Bella morphed the same shape with her unique substance. "Thicker, make it twice as thick." She obeyed as Emma's ice demonstration disappeared and she pointed at the rocks in the fire. "Place half the rocks in it." She told me. I lifted the white-hot stones carefully into large bowl like shape. "Place them around the edges, as bowl like as you can." Emma added anxiously.

"How're we going to put the food in? It'll burn straight away if we just dump it in." Bella said. Emma walked over to my front where the vegetables and chicken were hovering. She re-aranged them, squeezing lime inside the chicken before rubbing the rest over it. She quickly peeling the skin off the carrots and potatoes. She proceeded to cut the carrots into small circles, discarding the ends somewhere into the forest. She cut the potato in quarters and placed one at the each corner of the chicken. Carrots were then lain in between the potatoes and two sprigs of rosemary were soaked in some of the remaining lime, each being placed on each side of the chicken. The third was stuffed in the hole where the lime had been originally squeezed in. She repeated the process with the thyme before turning to Bella.

"Coat everything in one go. Make it as thin as a sheet of paper." Bella furrowed her eyebrows in concentration. Soon, the thinnest layer of hardened jelly I had ever seen was spreading over the recently prepared chicken. It was thinner than a piece of paper and if it wasn't for the shine, I wouldn't know it was there. It was so thin, I could see it bending slightly as Bella lifted it over the the white coloured rocks. She placed it inside and I could see as the film like substance bent and nestled itself onto the rocks.

Not needing to be told what to do next, I lifted the rest of the rocks from the fire and arranged them over and around the meat and veggies. I held them in place as Bella covered the rocks with another hollow ellipsoid and melding the two halves together. I lifted a large chunk out of the large pile of rocks I had smashed earlier on and Bella placed it in the hollow I had created.

"Rikki, just keep the rocks around that thing heated for the next twenty to thirty minutes while it cooks."

"I was starting to feel useless." Rikki mumbled, setting her watch.

We sat down on one of the logs that had been placed in a rough circle around the campfire that I hadn't noticed before. "Usually it would take forty minutes to an hour to cook, but we don't have to put it under ground, we can heat rocks so it's faster." Emma told us absentmindedly.

"Where are we going to sleep?' I asked. "I don't know about you guys, but my neck is still sore from those last two nights. Bella nodded in agreement.

"If you weren't such a prude, we'd have perfect pillows." Bella snickered playfully. I grumbled at her and hugged my precious nighty around myself.

"I'm never taking you off until I reach a proper shower again." I promised it. Emma and Rikki laughed.

"Oh crap!" Rikki jumped up suddenly.

"What?" Bella asked, startled.

"My jacket. It's got my phone in it. Where is it?" She turned around in circles. Despite the campfire giving off quite a bit of light, the garment was no where in sight, not to mention it was practically nightfall, I'd say about six o'clock.

"You must've dropped when we were in that castle." Emma sighed.

I nodded in agreement. "Probably when we were with that annoying not-ghost guy or when we were running."

"You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that thing we met was a poltergeist." Emma pondered, tapping her chin thoughtfully.

"A what?" Asked Rikki, checking her watch.

"Poltergeist. It's basically a spirit that can become a physical or non-physical entity at will. They usually 'haunt' a certain location and aren't really any harm, just annoying."

"Sounds like a myth." Rikki snorted.

"It is, but hey, we just met centa-don't heat the rocks up to high!" She cut herself off.

The rocks were cherry red. Rikki glanced back and snapped her hand back to her side. "Sorry." She apologized. "Only ten minutes left, I think we can leave it like this and it'll cook by itself fine now."

We lapsed back into silence. "I really wish we had marshmallows right about now." I voiced my opinion out loud.

"That reminds me of pillows." Bella murmured. She jumped up excitedly. "I found something in the forest before when we were cutting up grass for Rikki." She closed her eyes, her arms out. Out of the trees, a large almost transparent bowl came whizzing towards them, a few birds flying out of it, squawking in protest. It landed in front of us and I peered inside to see what looked like furry grass on steroids.

Each blade of grass was about a meter long, as thick as my thumb and the width of three of my fingers side my side. But that wasn't the weirdest bit. No, what was the weirdest, was the fact that each blade of grass was white. And I'm not talking creamy white, I mean pure, bright, printing paper coloured white. I reached down into the bowl and picked up a piece. I was right when I thought it looked furry. There were the smallest of hairs on them, just enough to give you sensation of touching a thin layer of velvet, though not quite as rich. It was also squishy. Not floppy, squishy. Yes, it was obviously pliable, but it felt like you could lay your head in it and it would sink down like a sponge and come back up when you got back up.

"What type of grass is this? It's not some form of poison ivy is it?" Emma asked. I quickly snatched my hand back, waiting for a rash or boils to appear on my skin. Nothing.

"I have no idea. I saw it growing on a tree. It was all over the trunk and branches. Some of it had even dropped off, all over the ground around it. I thought it was going to attack me or something, but when I pulled it off, it was just like pulling off a leaf from an ordinary tree. I'm not even sure if it _is_ grass."

"This place is getting weirder and weirder." Rikki shook her head.

"Doesn't matter," Bella shook her head. "Don't you get it? We can weave pillow cases and blankets with this stuff, even if it's just for something to do."

Emma inspected the strange plants and nodded. "Bella, your amazing. We definitely have enough of it." So we got to work.

I had just finished weaving the top of my pillowcase when Rikki's watch beeped. "Food!" She crowed, jumping up. I put my white rectangle down and followed her, Bella on my heals. I lifted a few of the now dull-red rocks off the top, looking for the package of food. It didn't take long and soon Bella had made large bowls and plates, accompanied by a table. We sat beside the fire, sitting on a few moved logs, our sides facing the roaring heat. Her utensils had been surprisingly delicate though she didn't seem to be able to sharpen anything so we ended up with only forks and spoons. It didn't matter much though, we were starving and didn't bother much with them. I had placed a number of lettuce leaves in a bowl and even Rikki had reached for them, wrapping on around a large chunk of chicken.

Rikki had called dibs on the drumstick and I quickly followed. Emma wasn't too fussy and served Bella as well as herself a chicken breast each. I was halfway through tearing my chicken apart when Rikki finished, left with only her veggies. She was already reaching for a chicken wing when Emma stopped her.

"Eat your veggies."

"I already ate half the lettuce you guys bought. I want more chicken." She whined.

"I'll freeze the next bit of chicken you touch unless you eat them." She threatened. Rikki grumbled and wolfed down her few pieces of carrot and potato.

"Gabby?" She asked with her mouth stuffed. Emma rolled her eyes but went back to eating. Rikki eagerly reached for the chicken wing, this time succeeding in landing it on her plate. I laughed along with Bella as she struggled to swallow her current mouth, too impatient to think to chew first.

"This is really good, considering it's not properly marinated or anything." Bella commented. I agreed. The lime had soaked into the chicken, inside and out. The faint taste of rosemary and thyme lingered in my mouth. The lettuce I wrapped around made it more refreshing without taking away the warming flavor of the chicken. The potato and carrots really weren't anything to complain about and I felt my tortured stomach slowly filling up as I began on a chicken wing.

What would have normally fed eight people was finished by us. Rikki ate the most and was still eating after we had all had our fill. I supplied water into a jug Bella made and we washed the meal down. It was no fruit juice but hey, maybe in a weeks time, if we had any left over, we could make ourselves some.

We talked and laughed for sometime, forgetting about our worries of being stuck while we weaving our pillows and Rikki finished off the chicken. She didn't even ask for dessert. Emma was the fastest weaver by far and she moved onto Rikki's who had slipped to the floor, slumping against the log in contentment.

It didn't take too long to finish weaving our pillow cases. When we were left with only the side opening, Bella made exact replicas of her earlier pillows and slipped them inside. I finished mine happily and placed it on the table where my plate had been previously. Everything had been cleared off said table by by Bella and Rikki was as hyper as ever, despite having eaten so much.

Bella had suggested we make full sets of bed sheets to place over soft jelly so we could sleep comfortably. It probably would've been faster to use our abilities but it was much funner this way. Emma had started it off and she had reached a small square when we joined her, each taking a side and working our way out. Emma told us that it would be easier to make just one big cover the size of two king size beds side by side.

Emma and I were working on the longer sides, so Rikki and Bella finished first and began working on a large blanket. We joined them soon after, this one taking longer. We made the blanket three layers thick, I could already feel how cold this place would be at night.

Once we were done, we tucked the first sheet onto a mattress the size of two king size beds side by side. This mattress was on top of an equally large bed frame. All four of us through our pillows down and threw the make-shift duvet over the top. We threw ourselves onto the bed and starred up at the starry sky.

Emma had set Rikki's watch to London's time when she decided we were somewhere in Britain and it seemed fairly accurate according to the sky, now showing eight o'clock. "I never thought we'd be using our mermaid powers to make ourselves a bed." Rikki mused. I laughed in agreement.

We were going to sleep when Bella spoke up. "What if there really are dangerous animals out there?"

"What if they're not scared of fire?" I asked as well.

"What if the centaurs don't keep their deal?" Rikki asked. This lead to a series of events that ended up with us lying on the bed with a fire and a house under the ten meter deep moon pool. Literally.

It started off with Bella and I deciding to create a small cottage like house around the camp fire. It was just a simple room with a large interior. The bed was placed at the back wall, taking up nearly the whole thing and the fire was in the center. The fridge had been fortified with Bella's hardened jelly and was placed in the coolest place possible. It basically looked like a demented not-so-transparent block of glass sitting in the corner like a failed piece of abstract art.

This had lead to letting air in and carbon dioxide from the fire out. Bella and I formed a dome with a large tube leading out of the ceiling and a chimney was added to the house, ironically not needing a fire to serve it's purpose. The fire still emanated warmth from behind it's new barrier but it wasn't warm enough for our liking, so we placed a layer of rocks under the bed and decided that Rikki would heat them up before we went to bed. Then we had realized that the door hinges were so flimsy that some one could break it down with a single blow, so Bella sealed off the door.

That lead to the conclusion that they could lift the house up and make like they would to a tent without a flooring, so I lifted up everything that wasn't made of Bella's jelly while she made a floor and secured everything made of jelly to the floor, including the fridge.

Then Emma had pointed out, that if someone were to find our clearing, they would think it odd that a house was sitting in the middle of a forest, not to mention it had no door and was made out of a substance not known to man. So Bella had made a window above the bed and yelled at me to keep the water away from her. I had realised why later on when the house lifted itself up and began to sink slowly in the moon pool.

I succeeded in keeping water out of the house through chimneys as well as Bella's face, which she had stuck out of her window. The moon pool's magic never ceased to amaze me. As the house sank lower and lower, I could see that the water wasn't over flowing, it constantly kept the same level as we sank.

When we landed on the sandy bottom, Bella had lengthened the two chimneys until the reached the surface. She assured Emma that the cave mouth wouldn't be filled with fumes when we surfaced later on-the fire place chimney was sitting just above the water outside the curtain of vines. I had seen her let the vines cover the cave mouth as we sunk lower and lower. The chimney letting air in was behind the vines, hiding us more effectively.

Bella had sealed shut the windows and we had just been about read to sleep when Rikki realized that we wouldn't be able to get out without Bella and I awake.

A new door was made, this time on the wall to the right of the bed. There was a tube leading up towards the surface about 2 meters wide. It rungs like a ladder and it went up halfway to the surface where it had a small platform. After that platform was the same tunnel, only it was filled with water and had only three rungs, two of which were underwater. It was on a steep angle going down, allowing us to swim out, reaching the end of the tunnel near the bottom of the moon pool. It was quite ingenious if I do say so myself.

That was how we got a house under water at nine o'clock, ready to sleep. I snuggled myself under the surprisingly warm blanket. Rikki had heated the rocks under the bed. Emma had admitted she had taken the idea from warming pans that were used in the 18th century she had read about.

Rikki slept on the left and Bella on the right, Emma and I snuggled under the covers between them. Emma was beside Bella, leaving me with Rikki.

As I drifted off to sleep, I thought, _'maybe now we can take our time finding a way out of here.' _

* * *

**AN: Ok, I know that last line sucks, but I really didn't know how to end it. If you guys are satisfied with it, I'll leave it, but any suggestions would be great. I hope that house thing wasn't too far off.  
**

**Next chappie involves the girls and Hagrid meeting c:**

**By the way, if there's no line break between he ending of Harry's POV and the start of Cleo, I have no idea why, but it's not letting me keep it there. It just disappears all of a sudden so please don't be mad.**


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